Fleeing From The Moon
by Lady Dementia
Summary: They’ve escaped, but their ship is crippled, their alliance is uneasy at best, and their pursuers are catching up with them… Third in the Celestial Skies series. Rating upped for gore.
1. Default Chapter

They've escaped, but their ship is crippled, their alliance is uneasy at best, and their pursuers are catching up with them…(third in the Celestial Skies series)  
  
Author's Note: Hasbro owns the Beast Wars, I make no profit, yadda yad ya. Anyway, YES, I know that this fic is…um…ayearandahalfoverdue, but I can work past that! Really!…I just don't know when I'll be FINISHING this fic. Encouragement is always welcome, and death threats are even kind of flattering once I stop running long enough to think about it.  
  
  
  
Fleeing From the Moon  
  
by Lady Dementia  
  
dementedangelhotmail.com  
  
  
  
Prologue:   
  
_The robot sitting at the desk drummed his fingers on the desktop, looking out a viewscreen at the moonbase below. From this magnification the damage wasn't seen as easily; one would have to know what it had looked like before the disaster to locate the empty spots in the space defense grid, in the ground support systems. Even then the damage didn't seem that bad. A couple ships and autoguns were gone: so what? One or two buildings had been blow apart: big deal. They could always build more, right? A dozen or so experiments had gone wrong or had needed to be terminated, but that had happened before. The scientists in charge of the major projects had assured him that most of the lost experiments were replaceable or not really necessary at all. The Maximal High Council and its Predacon allies had understood. The final body count had helped drive the point home that there was nothing that could have been done differently.   
  
It was understood that sacrifices had to be made. Because of the secrecy involved in the operation of the A.L.H. Research Center, his rear didn't have to be saved from the media, which would have blown some of the "inhumane" practices of the experimentation way out of proportion. Of course some of what was done wasn't legal in the most technical sense, but wasn't it legal if the law-making body of Cybertron and the Cybertronian Alliance approved of them? Secrecy made sure that none of the little irregularities in the scientific research leaked out, though, and that was the way everyone liked it, from the A.L.H Research Center to the Maximal High Council. Things had gone wrong, but nobody knew about it besides those involved. Things picked up where they had left off, minus some experiments and the people who had tragically gotten caught in the middle of the bad spots.  
  
There was the issue of the escapees, however.  
  
The fingers stopped in their monotonous tapping long enough to clench into a hard fist. The Cutting Edge had managed to make a Transwarp jump despite a direct hit by one of the defensive platforms in orbit around the moon. That meant that someone had survived on board. Several someones, in order to properly operate a starship that size. Someones who had apparently seen what the A.L.H Research Center was and were now loose in the galaxy, able to tell anyone who they came upon what the Center was. Therefore the Center, in cooperation with the demands of the Maximal High Council and its allies, had to find and exterminate those loose ends. The hunt had to start with a simple beginning, of course: who WERE the escapees?  
  
The robot behind the desk looked away from the viewscreen on his wall and directed his gaze towards the computer screen on the desk. A list of names scrolled down it under his optics: Captain Venara, Optimus Primal, Guns, Cheetor, Blackarachnia...it went on and on, noting down every crew member and passenger on board the Cutting Edge when the starship had arrived in orbit of the moonbase. They were in no particular order and only had one thing in common:  
  
Every one had the word 'DECEASED' behind it.   
  
After a long moment of looking at the results of the Center, he touched a key on the computer and was rewarded with another list, this one much shorter than the first. There were only three names. They all had the word 'ACTIVE' behind them. They were the last surviving passengers from the Cutting Edge and were the top suspects for engineering the successful escape. Only three, though. The scientists and mechanics he had assigned to research the matter had confirmed his thoughts: running a starship the size of the Cutting Edge would be dangerous, if not impossible, with only those three on board. Especially with the predicted damage done on the starship by the blast from the defense grid.  
  
His optics narrowed as he studied the names on his screen, one at a time.  
  
The standard Maximal background file on Rattrap was sketchy at best, but the Maximal High Council's Predacon allies had handed over a file with more information. It went without saying that most of the information had been gained through illegal means. It also went without saying that most of the informants were probably dead, or soon would be. The Tripedicus Council's files were often put together that way, and with the way it and the Maximal High Council were working together on this project it hadn't minded giving out all the information it knew.  
  
The robot touched a button again, highlighting Rattrap's name and pulling up the short brief on him. It told him that Rattrap was a Maximal, of the male gender, and had adopted an alternative mode of an organic rat and a vehicular mode besides that. His specialty for the Axalon mission was listed as 'Demolition and Computer Programming'. That was computer jargon code for 'He blows things up and hacks into files'.  
  
The rat could be tough, or even downright nasty to track down if the information the Predacon allies had supplied was proof of his abilities. Nothing had ever been proven, even by the Predacons. Small incidents that could never REALLY be traced back to Rattrap made him familiar with the Cybertronian underworld, but he had never been drawn far enough into it to be brought down by it. Nothing life-threatening or big enough to draw major attention, but enough that the Predacons' informants had been able to piece together bits of his lifestyle and money-spending habits and trace them to sources of money that couldn't have been from his legitimate jobs. Nothing had ever been proven, though, and Rattrap had left Cybertron on yet another legal jaunt through space paid for by the Maximal exploration funds, blurring the credit trail even further. Rattrap, above all, knew how to take care of himself.  
  
His finger moved on the computer keyboard and another, recently familiar file came up onto the screen. He had studied it carefully before deciding to trust Depth Charge and make him a Security Chief. Apparently that trust had been misplaced. The obsessive, fanatical hate of a common enemy hadn't been as all-consuming as he had been sure it was, and the manta ray had escaped. Somehow he and the rat had constructed an entire plan of attack on the A.L.H. Research Center and pulled it off. The technicians who tore apart the Center's computer core had found only traces of the original computer virus left, but it was enough to give them a starting point. They traced each tendril of the virus, tracking down what it hit and in what order. Security monitors that hadn't completely scrambled their recordings had been salvaged, showing only part of where and what Depth Charge had been doing but giving the technicians more things to check. The virus trail showed that much of the time the manta ray had been "cooperating" with the Center Security Teams he had actually been studying power relays and computer access consoles in preparation for the sabotage needed to get the maximum amount of chaos necessary to get the Cutting Edge out of orbit. The partially trashed files had shown something that struck everyone's interest, though. In a fit of conscience Depth Charge had dragged one special experiment along with him, too, and the evidence dug up so far showed that the rat and ray had needed to rework parts of their plan in order to make it work. They hadn't planned on having him along, but they had worked quickly and it HAD worked. They were loose.  
  
Optics narrowed with hate, lighting up inside into red furnaces of fury.  
  
X was loose.  
  
A quiet knock on the door cut off the spiral into thoughtless anger he had gotten to know so well, and he keyed it open. It slid away to show another robot, who walked in with what seemed like placid calm. The robot behind the desk indicated a chair without trying to make a pretense of being glad to see his visitor. The calm robot sat, only his burning red optics betraying his share of the hatred they both felt.  
  
"The reward being offered is high enough to catch the attention of most of the amateur and some of the professional bounty hunters," the calm robot told the other behind the desk without preamble. "Not really enough to catch much media attention. The criminal profiles are being doctored as we speak so that they justify the amount of credits being offered. The bounty notices will be posted with a group of similar cases so that if any media attention is called to the offers there will be an even chance of one of the others catching the spotlight."  
  
Used to the terse but smooth flow of information, the robot behind the desk touched another key on the computer and called up the doctored criminal files and the offered rewards. "Caught while hacking into secured computer files? An interesting crime for Depth Charge, perhaps." He tapped a finger against the desk thoughtfully. "Have their psychological profiles been altered enough to make their reactions to being discovered believable? We don't want them being wanted on murder charges if no one believes that they would have killed a security team to avoid being caught."  
  
The calm robot nodded. "It has been taken care of."  
  
A frown creased his face slightly as he looked at the computer screen again. "The reward..." He thought for a moment, trying to fit the jigsaw puzzle of the Maximal High Council's reasoning together. "Why not set it higher?" he conceded finally, admitting that he couldn't find the logic.  
  
"The bounty hunters will just be used to drive them out of hiding," the calm robot said, examining one of his blue arms as if it held the answers to his companion's questions. "Once they've made their presence known somewhere, the Alliance will send in retrieval groups. Things will stay out of the media better if the targets just disappear from their attention and back to here."  
  
"Ah." Now he saw the reasons. But one thing still stood out. "X isn't mentioned at all in this. There's no bounty for him."  
  
An almost gleeful, if hard, glint entered the optics of the seemingly calm robot. "The public doesn't need to know about him. He's the Center's secret, and the Council and its allies want to keep it that way."  
  
"Yes, I can see that." Fingers tapped again. "It's not likely that Depth Charge will let him escape again, after all. In fact, the predictions coming from our search teams indicate that they plan on the ray pretty much staying in the background guarding that freak while Rattrap keeps them hidden. They're all studying up on the rodent's REAL psychological file and looking for his usual contacts and hiding spots."  
  
"Rattrap does appear to be in charge. It was his virus in the computers." The calm robot didn't seem that dismayed by talking about the robot who had sabotaged his experiment.  
  
The robot behind the desk watched him carefully, then smiled thinly. "So they've approved your plans, I see. You have all of the original plans and observations, I assume, and they want you to try the entire experiment again. Is it likely that it will work the second time?"  
  
A slight shake of the calm robot's head answered him. "At least, not soon. The original spark was found only after going through many test subjects. Although the Council and its sources will soon be transporting subjects here to be used, it is doubtful that we will find one with the unique requirements we found in that one's spark. I will try, but bringing X back to the Center is the only sure way of getting results quickly." He sighed. "A pity many of the most recent observational files were destroyed by those two. I had hoped to see the end of the last experiment with energon deprivement."  
  
"And so you shall." With those words the robot behind the desk waved Dr. Kilju a dismissal that the placid robot took no offense at and returned to drumming his fingers on the desk, gazing at the viewscreen's display. He touched a key, and it switched to a view of deep space from another part of the starship his office was in. He looked at the stars, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and let his anger and hatred simmer. His enemy was out there somewhere.  
  
The Maximal High Council and its allies wanted X back and the two who had gotten him out silenced. He was perfectly willing to do that. Depth Charge had tricked him, Rattrap had sabotaged the base he was supposed to be protecting, and X...well, people like Depth Charge might insist that he was a sentient deserving of a name, even a name like Rampage, but he and Dr. Kilju knew better. X was an experiment, nothing more, except for the fact that the robot behind the desk had a rather large grudge against his continued existence. He would settle for returning him to what amounted to torture, however.   
  
The bounties for the other two escapees didn't specify Dead or Alive. Dead was preferable, but it could always be done after they were captured. The way the analysts were studying Rattrap's profile, the robot behind the desk was confident the rodent would lead his companions straight into a retrieval team's arms. All they had to do was build a better mousetrap, after all, for such a smart mouse.  
  
X was no mouse, though. And the People In Charge wanted him alive. VERY alive. He was important to them in ways that an experiment like him couldn't possibly understand. Having lived it his whole life so far, X had probably never even thought of it in terms of affecting others beside himself.   
  
But the People In Charge had. Maximal High Council, the mysterious Tripedicus Council, select allies from the Cybertronian Alliance--they all knew why the A.L.H. Research Facility and Dr. Kilju were so important. They were the key to unlocking and then, later, sharing X's secret. It had been the original reason the Maximal High Council had approved the Protoform X project, and it still wanted that secret for its very own so desperately that it was willing to search the galaxy for the escaped experiment. The robot behind the desk didn't know if any thought had actually been given to applying the final results of the study to the general populace, but he doubted it. Only important players got the rewards of the game in the end. He himself was an important piece in this puzzle, and the pain the research needed to put it together caused was only an added benefit.  
  
Admiral Jirex leaned back in his chair, a wide smile stretching across his face as he imagined the three robots fleeing from the moon his ships orbited. They would run, but they would be found. And then the precious secret would be discovered and unlocked.  
  
The secret of IMMORTALITY._


	2. Part 1

  
  
Part One  
  
  
  
The robot on the metal platform that was currently serving as a bed didn't look dangerous at the moment. An energon cube was on a shelf above him with tubes of the liquid energy leading into his body at a steady drip that was used up almost as soon as it entered the robot. There was too much of a risk of frying delicate circuitry if a constant stream of energon was used or else that kind of setup would have been in use. He hadn't moved a limb since Depth Charge had dragged him here and set up the energy feed, and the manta ray was honestly starting to think that maybe that last experiment by the Center had knocked the robot's body offline for good. What was the use of an indestructible spark if the body it was in was practically dead from starvation?  
  
Depth Charge turned away from Rampage's motionless form and stared at the computer components scattered across the bridge. He hadn't wanted to bring the crab to the control center of the ship, but he would have taken a chance of Rampage waking up unguarded if he had put him back in the cell several levels down in the starship. Not that he seriously thought that the crab could do much in his severely weakened condition, but it was also more convenient this way. He didn't have to keep running back and forth between checking on him and repairing the computers on the bridge. It saved time.  
  
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.   
  
Alright, he'd admit it: he was afraid. He was afraid of being alone in here, only an arm's length from the exploded computer than had disintegrated most of Rattrap's upper body and head. He had placed the pitiful remains of his friend in a distant room and locked the door, awash with the pain of grief, and realized that he was in a starship adrift in deep space who-knows-where with a computer system that was basically scrap and needed at least two people working at once to run it. He was the last of many victims; the one responsible for getting the information about the A.L.H. Research Center to Rarmet, the media hub of the galaxy, which would then expose it and its backers. They would be ruined; the people who had died would be avenged. The responsibilities fell on his shoulders alone.  
  
And all Depth Charge had left to fulfill his mission with was a starship drifting dead in space, some tapes and evidence that would never reach the planet if the starship couldn't get him there, and an unconscious homicidal psychopath who also happened to have fallen victim to the Center. There was no other person besides Rampage on board; in order to navigate the starship there had to be at least two people. That is, IF he could even get the computers back online. All the ship had now was basic life support.   
  
Depth Charge sat down at the computer station that had killed Rattrap and twitched his fins back, straightening his shoulders. All right, so he was afraid. The fear of being alone was illogical, but he knew that it would pass as the reality of Rattrap's death sank in. The other fear was more logical. He wasn't afraid of death, but of failure. If he couldn't stop the A.L.H. Research Center now, the atrocities being committed there would go on unchecked. That fear, almost frustration more than fear really, stuck in his chest and constricted, making everything seem hopeless. He was one 'bot against many, and he was afraid he wouldn't be enough to make a difference. He couldn't share this responsibility with anyone. He was by himself.  
  
A tiny sound made him snap around in his seat.  
  
  
  
His world was pain. His joints ached, his arms and legs were leaden with agony, and his spark pulsed with constant, level pangs of HURT. For some reason he dimly remembered as energy deprivation, his optics were offline. He must be in his cell. What had the latest test done to him? He must have finally been allowed to go offline, so the spark-compression experiment must have ended. Or had he merely been allowed to rest for a little while to prolong the agony? No, there was something in his arm. He could feel it; a small but steady influx of energy. Was it tainted? The only way to find out was to look at it. He strained to slide his legs over the side of his sleeping platform but only managed to shift one of his feet with a soft clang.  
  
Suddenly hands were pulling at the flow of energon into his arm, causing more pain and an immediate weakening in his entire body. He automatically tried to yell at the hands to stop, remembering too late that the gag Dr. Kilju had put on him prevented any noise from his voice box. To his vague shock his yell actually emerged from his mouth as a whimpered moan. Words said in a familiar voice were heard in his audios, but only the urgent tone made any sense to him. He couldn't understand what was being said in that tone.  
  
Then something cool slid into his mouth and he sputtered in surprise as liquid energon flowed down the small tube and into his throat. Only for a nano-second though, as his drained mind and body registered that this was ENERGY.  
  
  
  
"Slow down!" Depth Charge tugged the end of the tube away again, and Rampage made a sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper. It was obvious that the crab was in pain, but the demand for more energon was almost as fierce. "Your body can't handle too much energon too fast!" He waited for a long moment, then let the crab sip again, hoping that he wasn't doing this too quickly. Reading about what to do in with starvation victims wasn't the same as dealing with one, and seeing the pathetic, eager way Rampage reached for the energy source the best he could in his weakened state made it hard for him to deliberately withhold it.   
  
According to the text he and Rattrap had been able to dig up just prior to their escape, the systems in a starved 'bot were mostly shut down. Giving them too much energon too fast caused them to snap back online, trying to do their full functions in a body that was too weak to handle that. Like a human eating food that was too rich, a robot's body would reject the energon.   
  
"Slow down!" he said again. A weak movement of the crab's hands attracted his attention when he removed the tube again. So. Rampage's systems WERE recovering. Depth Charge checked the level of the energon remaining in the cube and pulled away from the crab. "That's enough for now."  
  
A weak sound of protest came from Rampage, and that actually encouraged the manta ray. It was the first sign of understanding by the abused form lying on the make-shift bed.  
  
"Give your systems time to adjust," he told the crab, hoping some of what he was saying was getting through. "I'll continue the intravenous feed while you're offline."  
  
  
  
The pain wasn't as bad now, and he could vaguely understand what the familiar voice was telling him. His audios had a disturbing tendency to miss words, but he got the general idea. This voice meant him no harm. He wasn't at the A.L.H. Research Center anymore. This wasn't some cruel experiment!  
  
Memories slid past his conscious mind as he strained to listen to what the voice was saying, and he started to relax. He couldn't QUITE remember, but what he could told him to trust the voice...for now.  
  
He drifted wearily into a more natural resting state.  
  
  
  
When he woke this time, he stayed still. Pain still beat at him relentlessly, but it had ebbed a long way from burning agony it had been the first time he awoke. The energy feed was back in his arm again, and he reveled in the strength it was giving him. The starvation was over. He winced at the hollow pain in his spark even as he let himself feel the restoration of his systems. Some things hadn't been restored to him, apparently.  
  
"Blasted computer!"  
  
The crash and accompanying curse came from nearby, and he slowly powered up his optics. His sight flickered alarmingly for a little bit, and his surroundings remained a bit blurred, but at least he could see the origin of the angry words.  
  
A shielding panel for a computer was on the floor, with the upper part of someone growing from it. Rampage puzzled over what his optics were showing him, trying to figure out why the struggling figure had the lower body of a computer. Then things snapped into perspective; the shielding panel had fallen onto the floor, pinning the robot down underneath it. That was what the noise had been. Now the robot under the computer panel was cursing in what the crab slowly realized was a familiar voice.  
  
"Depth Charge?"  
  
His voice was weak enough that for a moment he wondered if he had said anything, but the ray stopped struggling in order to stare across the room at him. A strange mix of emotions crossed the face of his old enemy: hatred and relief, frustration and fear, anger and hope. His features finally settled into an expression of irritation, but Rampage remained confused as he sensed the dampened fear tainting the manta ray. Depth Charge had never been afraid around him before...  
  
"Now you're awake? Great," Depth Charge said gruffly. "Just what I needed," he added with more than a hint of bitter sarcasm. "First this, now you come back online at the worst possible time..."  
  
Rampage did his best to sneer as his optics flickered with the effort. "Well, I'm SO sorry to inconvenience you, Fish Face. I'll just get up and leave then--" But his arms gave out when he tried to brace them to heave himself upright, and he gasped as his entire body weakened. His optics unfocused again.  
  
"Stay STILL!" the blurred silver and blue form on the floor yelled at him.  
  
He wasn't sure he heard him right. His audios had missed part of what he said. "Wha...what?" His voice shook.  
  
"Don't move! Your body can't take a lot of movement at the moment, so just stay still!" His own face must have shown doubt because there was a sigh of frustration. When Depth Charge's voice came again, it was low with reluctant persuasion, "Look, this is going to sound strange, but you have to trust me. Don't move."  
  
Rampage felt himself shaking with energy withdrawal and deliberately tried to relax. It took what seemed like a long time, but gradually the shaking stopped and his optics slowly focused, although they were much dimmer than before. "What's going on?" he asked faintly.  
  
"I'll explain later when I'm more sure you're hearing everything I say," Depth Charge said, looking at him critically.  
  
The crab hesitated, extremely conscious of both his own and the ray's vulnerable situations. Did he dare put his life in his worst enemy's hands? A shock of realization hit him, though, as he thought it over; Depth Charge wasn't his worst enemy any longer. He wasn't sure what they were to each other now, but the ray had rescued him from the torture of experimentation. Did enemies do that? Before he had been to the A.L.H. Research Center, he would have thought Maximals in general did that sort of thing. But his chief tormentors had both been Maximals. Where did that leave him with Depth Charge, a Maximal who had gone against his government?  
  
Reluctantly, Rampage nodded. He watched the manta ray go back to trying to get out from underneath the computer panel and privately admitted that he probably wouldn't have been able to do anything, anyway. Just moving his head and powering up his optics had left him limp with lack of energy.  
  
But while his optics dimmed, his mind raced in confused circles. He didn't know what was going on! Depth Charge, of all people, had rescued...HIM? It didn't make any sense at all, and Rampage could only wonder uneasily what was going to happen to him now. The fatigue-fogged memories that he had of the escape provided no clues except that it seemed like the ray had actually come back for him instead of just breaking out on his own. But why had the ray been breaking out of the Research Center? Hadn't he had the position he had wanted, in control of the Protoform X Security?  
  
He remembered the blind chaos that had surrounded them as they fled the Center. He had been forced to rely on Depth Charge to guide him when his optics had finally given out, so he had only been able to hear the sirens and panicked intercom messages requesting help in besieged areas. Had it only been an opportunity that the ray had leapt on, or had the confusion been planned? Either way, Depth Charge had led him, blind and helpless, out of torture and into...what?  
  
Maybe the manta ray had only rescued him in order to kill him. In that case, Rampage would welcome death over returning to the endless tests and experiments that Dr. Kilju had organized for him. Starvation had only been part of what had been planned, and his breath caught strangely as he remembered the long, detailed descriptions Admiral Jirex had read aloud to him between each excruciating test on his spark, or his body, or how his spark affected his body, or whatever the scientists wanted to do to him. A list of questions Dr. Kilju and his new associates had thought up during the time when the crab had been free and were going to find answers for no matter the pain they caused. Rampage had listened to the mocking voice of the Admiral and had been sickened by the hopeless future presented to him. Anger had sustained him for a time, but the draining starvation had taken away even the energy needed to keep that alive. By then, if he could have managed it, he would have taken his own life to stop the pain, the humiliation. But he couldn't. Immortality had its setbacks, and there were times when he wished he didn't have it.   
  
Rampage strained against the heavy lethargy settling over him and heaved a sigh of bitter surrender. He had no choice but to trust Depth Charge for now. He couldn't return to the A.L.H. Research Center, and he was willing to pay any price to stay out of it. If he had to live without freedom again, in chains if that was what Depth Charge required to keep him under control, he would. Not that he wouldn't try to escape, but he didn't think that the ray had spontaneously broken him out of the torture just to let him go again, or even to kill him. Feeding him energy didn't go along with that idea at all. Really, though, nothing in the ordinary way of things was happening, and he was bewildered by his position in this situation: unknown and weak.  
  
That very weakness swamped him, shutting down his body into a period of recharge as his mind subsided into subconscious unease.  
  
  
  
His arms strained, pushing against the heavy metal panel on top of his legs, and Depth Charge continued muttering curses as it refused to relent to the pressure. Even as he struggled, though, he glanced at the silent form on the metal shelf, wondering if Rampage had really gone offline. He didn't seriously think that the crab could do anything if he WAS awake, but he hadn't thought he would react so strongly to him awakening in the first place. He wasn't sure he wanted the crab to reawaken until he had figured out his own emotions.   
  
Had it been that long since he'd actually talked to someone, or did it just seem like it? As much as he had disliked being stranded on Earth, its way of measuring time had grown on him. He had set a schedule up for himself on the planet, hunting for Rampage for five sunrises and then deliberately taking a break. The sight of the sun breaking over the horizon tended to remind him more than his internal clock. Here on the ship there were obviously no sunrises, but he had gotten used to using the time measurements; he had been stranded here for four 'days' by Earth time. In all that time, he had spoken only a few last words for Rattrap and a couple brief conversations with a semi-conscious Rampage. Depth Charge was a solitary 'bot by nature, but the very lack of company made him wish there was some.  
  
But Rampage was all there was.   
  
He muttered a few more curses at that thought more than at the computer still pinning him down, but then he sighed and fell silent. The computer panel was heavy, emphasizing what he already knew: he couldn't repair this ship by himself. He couldn't FLY it by himself. He needed someone else to help him, and the only other person available was his most hated enemy. Or, at least, the person he HAD hated the most. Now he wasn't sure if that hatred should be pity or not. After what had been done to the crab, could he really blame Rampage for being how he was? Were the killings justified by what had been done to him?  
  
He didn't know, but he couldn't think about his confusion right now. What he needed more than answers to his questions was a second person to help him fly this crippled ship. Depth Charge had tracked X across the galaxy, and even though he had called him a mass murderer and a psychopath, one thing he had never found evidence of was a lack of intelligence. The files he had accessed both from the original Protoform X compound and from the A.L.H Research Center confirmed that Rampage was considered, for all his faults, to be brilliant. For some reason Depth Charge couldn't understand, the scientists who had created the Protoform X project had specifically designed the protoform to be smarter than they were.  
  
All of which meant that Rampage was intelligent enough to understand Depth Charge's reasons for getting to Rarmet. He hoped so, at least. There had to be SOME way to convince the crab to help him, but he couldn't—or wouldn't—offer freedom as a bribe. Rampage would only find another population to massacre, and Depth Charge had sworn that Omicron and Rugby wouldn't happen again. If it came down to it, the manta ray would choose to keep Rampage locked up rather than setting him loose, even if he had to find some way to repair the ship on his own.  
  
Hopefully he wouldn't have to resort to that. He wasn't sure he could do it. He heaved once more at the computer, sighing in relief as it finally shifted enough for him to roll out from underneath its weight. Next time, however, he might not be able to move it. Perhaps, he thought wryly, he should work on something lighter for now. Like…wiring. He would have to scavenge through the already-rerouted consoles just to find enough intact wiring to use on the consoles Rattrap had set up to control the ship. The useless consoles would end up gutted, empty husks by the time he was through with them, and it made him feel slightly guilty. This ship had once been Captain Venara's pride and joy.  
  
But Captain Venara was dead; murdered like she hadn't been a Maximal worthy of living. Depth Charge steeled himself with thoughts that were almost familiar. Now, too, he sought justice. His target was just bigger this time, that's all.  
  
Meanwhile, though, the 'bot he had once hunted across the galaxy lay offline, dim optics staring at him sightlessly. Depth Charge would have to get used to being around him without trying to kill him. The hunt had ended, but now they were both the hunted.  
  
Together, they had to outrun the hunters. 


	3. Part 2

  
  
Part Two  
  
  
  
"Why are you doing this?"  
  
The quiet question interrupted his concentration, and Depth Charge jerked his head up in surprise. "OW!" After rubbing his head where he had hit it on the computer panel, he slid out from underneath it and lifted his head again. He wasn't sure what he expected to see.  
  
Emerald optics looked back at him, shadowed with emotions he wasn't used to seeing in them: uncertainty, doubt…gratefulness? That last might have been his imagination. The crab held the husk of an energon cube in one hand, so he had obviously been awake for a little while before deciding to speak, just watching Depth Charge work. He had propped himself up on one elbow, but the ray couldn't tell if he was simply too weak to sit up fully or not.   
  
"Why?" Rampage repeated, and his voice was wary. For once, he wasn't trying to manipulate his old friend in any way. He just wanted an answer. Like he had been back at the Center, he was weak and at the mercy of something he couldn't control and didn't entirely understand. Unlike then, he could ask questions.  
  
A thousand answers ran through Depth Charge's mind, but he tried seem casual as he thought them through. First, though…  
  
His hand reached out slowly, his optics locked on the crab, and he lifted a familiar item into view from where it had been by his side. He had carried it around faithfully ever since he had rescued Rampage from the Center because in this, the Center had been right. There had to be a reliable way to control someone like Rampage, even if Depth Charge couldn't agree with how this particular method had been refined. Rampage's optics widened, then narrowed, something like respect showing in them…or perhaps it was hatred? Depth Charge dismissed it as unimportant for the moment.   
  
"I want something from you," he said finally, choosing that answer as the one Rampage would probably believe the most.  
  
Rampage tore his optics from the box holding the captured core of his spark. "You?" He laughed, the sound containing more shock than amusement. "YOU? Want something from ME?" But he relaxed by a tiny bit as he said it. This was something he could relate to. This was Predacon reasoning, and he had been a Predacon ever since Megatron had forced him to join the ranks. Saving someone so a favor could be claimed later was understandable. But what could Depth Charge want that he had done all of this? "What?" he asked curiously, making himself a little more comfortable on the hard shelf serving as his bed.   
  
The manta ray climbed to his feet, and Rampage's curiosity grew as he felt a tinge of fear from the other 'bot. Not of him, as he had thought before, but it was fear nevertheless…how strange. "Do you know what Rarmet is?" Depth Charge asked, and Rampage frowned.  
  
"A planet, right?" He thought for a nano-second of adding that he had wanted to visit the place for a day of killing or two, but if that made the ray angry…Rampage was essentially helpless at the moment with lack of energy. Besides, he didn't know if it was even a colonized world. And he was still curious. If he made the ray mad, he might not learn what Depth Charge wanted. "That's all I know," he added when Depth Charge kept waiting for more, and the admission was grudging. He knew his knowledge of the known universe was sorely lacking. He just didn't like having to admit it, especially to this 'bot of all 'bots.  
  
But Depth Charge merely nodded. "It's a world that's made its name through information," he said slowly, seeming to think his words through as he said them. "There's a very loose government that's mostly in charge of the military, but the rest of the planet is dedicated to newsgroups." He nodded his head again when Rampage's optics gleamed in speculation. "If I can reach Rarmet, I can expose the A.L.H. Research Center to the entire universe. I know the Maximal High Council was behind the Proto—" He stopped as Rampage shifted resentfully, and the ray was reminded of how Dr. Kilju and Admiral Jirex had never referred to Rampage as anything other than an experiment. It was a little detail, but he had to admit that it would be something that would wear on his own nerves if he had been talked about like that. "The Maximal High Council was behind your creation," he said instead, and Rampage shifted again, this time in surprise, "and there has to be some kind of agreement between the Predacons and Maximals in order for the Center to be operated jointly like that. With the recordings of the crew abductions from onboard this ship and my own account of what the Center was doing, Rarmet can expose everything."  
  
Rampage stared at Depth Charge with unblinking optics as the ray paused, and Depth Charge wondered uneasily if this would be for nothing. His hand tightened a bit on the spark box, though, and another thought occurred to him. Could he force the crab to work with him? Megatron had tortured obedience from him back on Earth…but would he be any better than the Predacon if he did that? Yet if he didn't get to Rarmet somehow, the Center would keep experimenting and murdering innocent ship crews…  
  
Meanwhile, he put the spark-box down on the nearest computer before he crushed it in his grip, continuing doggedly while his mind wrestled with the new problem. "Most of the universe looks at Cybertron as an honest member of interstellar trade agreements and alliances, but if the Maximal High Council is shown to have been behind a facility that violated most of Cybertron's own laws the damage to the Council's image will most likely throw the current people in power into prison. The Center will almost certainly be shut down, and the scandal will make Cybertron's allies very unwilling to trust those responsible for supporting it. There are several alliances that are shaky to begin with, so there are some that will collapse, and more will probably follow if there's an investigation into what's been happening. Do you understand my reasoning?" he added when Rampage only stared at him.   
  
The crab bent his head in a slow, thoughtful nod.  
  
"That's why I need to get to Rarmet. And," he took a deep breath, noting the interested look that lit Rampage's face when he tensed, "I need you to help me do it."  
  
The crab had seen the state of the starship bridge and guessed something of what Depth Charge wanted, but what interested him more was what the ray had said. "Why is ruining Cybertron so important to you?" he asked quietly, wondering how far he could push the ray. "You've never expressed any desire to join me in destruction before…"  
  
Depth Charge stiffened, his eyes narrowing. The anger subsided almost as soon as it was provoked, though, and the ray dropped his optics to the floor. He slumped against the wall, finally showing how tired and worn he had become. Despite what Rampage had been picking up from his old playmate's frayed emotions, the physical evidence came as something of a shock, and he sat up fully to watch the ray. "The Center killed everyone, did you know that?" Depth Charge asked without lifting his optics from the floor. "The entire crew of this ship. Optimus, and everyone else from Earth. The Admir--Jirex would have killed me off, too, if I hadn't acted like I didn't care about anything else but keeping you contained. And nobody cared. It was just an everyday thing to the Center. It happened with enough frequency that nobody cared any more…and the Maximal High Council has to know about it. If it's happening, then the government I put my trust in for so long has sanctioned it, and that means it KILLED MY FRIENDS!" Depth Charge realized he had shouted the last words, and a brief glance up showed that Rampage was mesmerized by his outburst. Furious enough not to care that he was making a spectacle of himself, the ray paced back and forth across the wire-littered floor. "For what they did to stop Megatron, they should have been hailed as heroes, not killed and their murders covered up! This isn't a just government, it's not—not—it's not FAIR!"  
  
Frustrated, angry, and only gaining momentum as he ranted, he kicked part of a console out of his way and took another turn around the bridge. "Rattrap almost made it out. If we hadn't reworked the plan to get you out too, he would have made it!" Actually, he didn't know that for sure, but his deep-seated hatred for the killer silently watching him was finally boiling over. Everything that had gone wrong could safely be blamed on this one 'bot. "If not for YOU, he would have survived!" Depth Charge shouted. "If not for the Council, the Center would have never existed, and the other Maximals would still be alive! Captain Venara would be standing here instead of me, and you…" His voice trailed off to a malevolent hiss as he whirled to face the crab, unaware that his fists were clenched and his optics were brilliant with grief. "YOU would be DEAD."  
  
Rampage cocked his head to one side, emerald eyes faintly amused. Raising his hands, he began to clap them slowly. "Bravo, Depth Charge," he chuckled, and the ray tensed, impossibly, further. "After all this time chasing me, you've reached the inevitable conclusion." He smirked, drawing out the moment until it seemed that Depth Charge would lunge across the bridge at him. Since he knew he wasn't strong enough for a fight yet, he reluctantly finished his thought. "You've finally realized that it's all about vengeance."  
  
Depth Charge's optics went blank as the crab's words hit, but then he stumbled back, his knee joints weakening as his fury left him abruptly. "No." But deep down he knew it was true. "No," he repeated, helpless as the truth stole his anger. "It's not…I want justice. It's not vengeance. You're wrong."  
  
"Then why ruin Cybertron's reputation? Why expose the Maximal High Council's dirty little secret to the entire universe?" Rampage pressed, taking in the ray's sudden pain with a triumphant smile. "There's no need to drag both Maximals and Predacons through the mud. I'm sure you could find another way to punish the Council if that's what you were really after. But it's not that simple, is it?" he asked with an edge to his voice that made Depth Charge flinch. "You want revenge. You've ALWAYS wanted revenge. You can dress it up with words like 'justice' and 'fairness,' but you didn't chase me across galaxies after I was captured for justice, now did you? I was already locked away, but you hunted me down anyway. What would you have done, Depth Charge, if my pod hadn't brought me back online? Would you have held your own trial for me before killing me? No," his voice fell to a soft, dangerous growl, "because that's not what you wanted."  
  
"I wanted justice," Depth Charge protested, but his words sounded like an excuse even to himself.  
  
"And now? Is that what you want for Rattrap's death?" The ray stared at him with anger lighting up his optics again, but Rampage probed the new wound in his playmate ruthlessly. "Is one robot's life worth all of this? No. I'm sure the government has done worse things in the name of Cybertron, after all."  
  
"Shut up," the ray snarled.  
  
"Even a couple starships full of innocent crews aren't really that much if the government decides the project is worth their lives. You forget, old friend," and Depth Charge made an ugly noise as he called him that, "that the government you serve is the one that decides what justice really is. They judged me, and now they've judged you."  
  
"Shut up." A little louder, but more uncertain.  
  
Rampage shook his head in mock sorrow. "You're outside of your own law now, Depth Charge. Do you realize that, I wonder? You've broken the law in your search for justice, and I'm sure the Center will try and bring you full circle. We might even have matching cells."  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"Perhaps you should just admit that justice is only what you make of it. A thousand billion sentient beings in this universe making up their own version of justice; who says that your version is the right one? By what right do you judge an entire planet? Your plan might bring down Cybertron's current government, but for what? For a few Maximals you were stranded on a planet with? For a starship's crew?"  
  
"Shut UP!" Depth Charge howled. "It wasn't fair, it wasn't—"  
  
"The government obviously thought it was fair," Rampage interrupted relentlessly. "You're only one 'bot against an entire planet, and what you think is fair and just is an individual opinion. Much like the one you hold about me. I'm certain that Rattrap's motives were much simpler."  
  
"ENOUGH!" the ray shouted, then glared across the bridge at the other 'bot, panting slightly. An odd mix of anger, despair, grief, and bewilderment filled him. Their encounters were almost always like this: the monster peeled away layers of him even as they fought, and Depth Charge never knew WHY… "What do you want from me?" he demanded more quietly, but the question had a strange note of pleading in it.  
  
Rampage looked at his old friend, his old playmate, his old victim, and he saw what had been made from the Security Chief of Omicron he had known so long ago. The everyday normal emotions of an everyday normal robot had been stripped away into a core of titanium that was beautiful in its simplistic complexity. Unnecessary emotions lingered, but they highlighted the edges instead of dominating the design. Strong, determined feelings remained, a personality that would accept no more outside manipulation carving away at it. Still, there was one thing left that was needed. "Admit that it's vengeance you want," Rampage coaxed. "You can disguise it all you want to anyone else, but I know the truth. I just want you to say it."   
  
Depth Charge stared at him, silent with something that was more like recognition than surprise. This entire conversation had been a reversion back into what things had been like between them before the A.L.H. Research Center. Every time, every single slagging time after they fought, he would realize that the crab had forced him to see something about himself that he hadn't wanted to. Maybe it was willful blindness, but he had to admit that it was better to know these things than to let the crab use them as a weapon. It had puzzled him back on Earth, at least when he wasn't furious enough not to think about it, that in Rampage's game of psychological warfare he kept on giving away his most potent weapons.  
  
Now his shoulders relaxed in a slow movement, the fierce mix of emotions bleeding out of him steadily as he considered Rampage's words. Actually considering them, not just reacting to them. Blissful ignorance of his own motivations was folly, and he knew it.   
  
It didn't mean he had to like what the ignorance had been hiding.  
  
Depth Charge looked down, away from the emerald optics that glittered with laughter at his expense, and he stared at his clenched fists. With a conscious effort, he opened his hands and flexed them. "Vengeance," he said thoughtfully, and he wondered in a distant way if he really believed that the immortal would answer anything honestly. "What is vengeance?" he mused almost under his breath.  
  
Rampage slid his legs over the side of the metal platform and tested his feet against the floor. Grimacing, he decided he was still too weak to try and get up. "Vengeance is the act of returning pain for pain inflicted," he said after a moment, and he could tell that the ray was startled he had bothered to say anything. The question hadn't really been aimed at him.  
  
That seemed to be what he was feeling, Depth Charge admitted to himself. "And is that what you want?" he asked cautiously. He had to find something to get the crab's cooperation…  
  
The question made the other robot look up quickly from contemplating the computer parts strewn across the floor. It genuinely appeared to surprise him. "Why do you care?" he temporized, and Depth Charge saw the brief hesitation before he answered.  
  
"I want to know why this is so important to you," he answered, not adding that he was looking for a weakness, for leverage, anything that he could use to his advantage.   
  
The crab looked at him, then shrugged and nodded. "Perhaps," he said in a neutral way. "There has been a lot of pain in my life." Anger flashed for an instant across his face. "I can certainly think of some people I would like to get revenge on." A sly look entered his optics as he watched Depth Charge. "But you avoid the question of your own motivations, my friend."  
  
That earned a searing glare. "Why do you care?" Depth Charge snapped back at him.  
  
"Hmm. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose." Rampage leaned back, optics narrowing as he thought about how much he should tell his old playmate. He had never suspected they would end up like this, apparently trapped together on a crippled ship. Or so he assumed from looking at the wreck that had once been the bridge of a starship. After the shock of realizing that he really wasn't at the Center any longer, the situation had moved him into bemusement. Teasing Depth Charge had been an automatic defense as he tried to figure out what was going on. He felt little besides a vague satisfaction that the Maximals and Predacons he had known were dead, but there was a lot of anger. Vengeance? He hadn't thought of vengeance as a motivation for killing anyone for a long, long time…the ray's question had reminded him of that, reminded him of a time when…  
  
He shook himself from that memory, ignoring the strange look that brought him from Depth Charge. He had no illusions about how hard he could push his body at the moment; right now he was at the ray's mercy. Depth Charge needed his help--that much was clear. That he was desperate enough to resort to talking to him was interesting enough, and he might be able to use that to his advantage…and the question was, how much could he tell the one who had hunted him across space and time?  
  
Emerald optics narrowed further, the mind behind them thinking, planning.  
  
"Surely you can see that no matter how you try to cover up your true purpose, you want revenge, not justice." Rampage held up a hand when Depth Charge started to say something. "Don't try to deny it, Fish Face. You want the High Council to pay for what happened to Rattrap, right?" The ray glared for a moment more, then jerked a nod. "How did he die, anyway? No, nevermind. Maybe I can find out later if it was as painful as the death I had planned for him." Rampage chuckled, continuing before the ray could find the words to yell at him, "It doesn't really matter. What matters to me is that you admit that it is really vengeance you want. Quite simply, once you admit that, there's no reason for you to deny me MY revenge. If you get revenge, then I insist that I get mine. Is that what you wanted to know?"  
  
Depth Charge blinked, incredulous. "Do you really expect to be let go after everything you've done?!"  
  
Rampage smiled a bit. It amazed him sometimes how other people's bloodlust blinded them. Perhaps living with it for so long had gotten him used to it, but it was amusing to see Depth Charge reacting like any other robot. Couldn't he think beyond his need for revenge? "I didn't expect you to grant that. What I want is revenge on Jirex and Kilju."  
  
"What do you mean?" The ray's own optics narrowed in suspicion, but also in speculation.   
  
"What would happen if I helped you and we arrived in Rarmet? What then?" Rampage shot back.  
  
Depth Charge resumed pacing around the bridge, but this time more slowly, stopping to pick up a half-repaired piece of console. "I'd turn over the recordings of the crew abductions and testify," he said as he examined it. "It should be enough evidence to sway the public."  
  
"Ah, yes. Public opinion. And what if the public is set against you, Depth Charge? Why would anyone listen to a criminal who's probably just trying to save himself?" Rampage smiled as the ray turned to look at him. "You broke out of a government facility, remember? I'd bet my spark the Council has a warrant out on your life."  
  
He wanted to deny it, but unfortunately…the crab was right. He hadn't thought beyond the fact that what the Center was doing was wrong. But he had seen it happen before and had considered the people that had testified on Rarmet to just be lying trash. The recordings would only sway those people who hadn't already convinced themselves that he was in it for his own sake. If he was being hunted as a criminal, then everything he was trying to do would only convince a few. "Slag," he muttered without even realizing it.  
  
"There goes your plan, Fish Face. But there's another way…IF you're willing to take it."  
  
"I'm not letting you go free," he snapped.  
  
"You don't have to," Rampage insisted. "But your problem is that you're still thinking that I WANT to go free." The finned robot's optics went wide with surprise, and the crab allowed himself an dangerous snarl that reminded Depth Charge, however unnecessarily, that he was talking to a psychopath. "I know that with that in your hand," he nodded pointedly at the spark-box still resting on a computer top, "you can keep me locked away forever if that's what you want. I'm not stupid, after all. It's in my best interest to go along with what you want, but what you're trying to do won't work."  
  
Taking the precaution of striding back across the bridge and picking up the spark-box, Depth Charge turned to give his enemy/ally his full attention. "I'm listening," he said curtly.  
  
A change from how things were normally, Rampage thought. Then again, was anything in this situation normal anymore? Why not just admit that they were in new territory? "Like I said, I'm not stupid. I've seen the kind of firepower Jirex and Kilju surround themselves with. I might be able to get through their security eventually, but the odds are against me. There are, however, other ways of getting to those two." The dangerous snarl showed itself again. "I'm a convicted criminal, and I have nothing to lose. If I testify—"  
  
"WHAT--?!"  
  
Rampage held up his hand again, his optics locked with the ray's. Reluctantly, Depth Charge subsided. "Let me finish. If I testify on Rarmet IN YOUR CUSTODY, it will be clear to anyone who knows anything about you OR me that I have nothing to gain." This time the snarl was of anticipation. "If nothing else, I'm evidence that the Maximal High Council IS hiding something. People will listen to me where they would scorn you."  
  
Depth Charge stared at him, half-stunned by the logic…and the fact that this logic was coming from Rampage. "H-how will that get you revenge?" he stammered after a moment of trying to unscramble his thoughts.  
  
The crab smiled unpleasantly. "Their careers will be ruined. That will bring me almost as much satisfaction as tearing them apart with my own hands. You might not have had to listen to them gloat about their status, but I had to. Every single slagging time I saw Jirex, he brought up his rank, and Kilju just LOVED to play doctor on me, didn't he? A scandal the size of the one we could create would send the Council hunting for scapegoats to throw to the media, and the first ones they would find would be my DEAR friends back at the Center. It would only be a delay in the process of tearing down the Council itself, but from what I've seen of reporters…" The smile turned back into that snarl full of predatory anticipation. "Those two will be torn apart in a way far more painful and humiliating than anything physical." Rampage cocked his head again, studying the blue-silver robot standing across the bridge. "Dare you deny me that sweet revenge if you would seek your own?"  
  
For a minute, Depth Charge refused to look up and meet his prisoner's gaze. Instead, he turned the spark-box over and over in his hands, looking into the depths of the shimmering spark trapped inside. It seemed too pretty, too perfect, to be able to control someone. Inside it he saw Silverbolt and Blackarachnia holding each other; Optimus, Rhinox, and Cheetor laughing as they walked down the corridor towards a shuttle ride they wouldn't return from; Rattrap desperately trying to fly a ship he couldn't handle alone. He saw a hundred slaughtered robots in a colony called Omicron; body parts thrown carelessly to the floor in Starbase Rugby; a government official telling him that the Maximal High Council's decision had been to put Protoform X into statis, then into exile on a barren planet. There were memories of the Beast Wars on ancient Earth; the grim hatred during the hunt for an immortal killer; the helpless anger as Admiral Jirex and Dr. Kilju tortured a 'bot who could only scream silently in agony. Someone had to call the ones responsible for this to justice, but everyone else was dead. That left only him to bring an entire government and everyone involved A.L.H. Research Center to justice; did he have any right to do it?  
  
No. He didn't. In the end, his rights were determined by the Council, and it was him against the Council. The Council would win if he tried to do this through proper channels, taking out only those he could directly implicate. But he didn't want only those he knew about to take the fall. He wanted EVERYONE who had brought this about to pay the price.  
  
Now he finally looked up, tearing his gaze from the sparkling orb inside its crude trap. "I want to return the pain to those responsible," he said clearly, no doubt or shame in his voice. "If that's what you call vengeance, then it's vengeance that I want. I, however, see it as justice."  
  
Rampage smiled. Then he began to chuckle. Soon he was laughing outright. "Very well," he said when he had recovered enough to talk coherently. "Then I guess I can claim that that I seek justice instead of vengeance." Still smiling, he nodded as if he had reached a decision. "I will help you get to Rarmet. Beyond that," he held up a warning finger, "I promise nothing. You have my cooperation, not my enslavement. I will not go back to tests and doctors!"  
  
Depth Charge blinked, taken aback by the abrupt rage in the crab's voice. Not that he could be blamed. Not after what had been done to him. "No. You won't," he said, and his own tone of voice made the words a grim oath.  
  
The crab considered the promise of death held in those words, then chose to ignore it for the moment. He'd heard worse. "So?" he asked instead.  
  
"So what?"  
  
He sighed impatiently. "Fish Face, I've been locked up in a cell most of the time since we left Earth. I have no idea where we are, why this place is looking like this, and what happened that prompted you to break me out. Beyond some very vague hints that you've been giving, that is. Would you mind explaining what the slag is going on?!"   
  
"Oh," the ray said a bit lamely. He hadn't thought about this…  
  
"And, um," Rampage looked down at the empty energon cube sitting next to him. He had put it down, but the husk was a constant reminder of how low he was on energy, even if his internal computer didn't keep telling him the same thing. "I hope that you're not planning to starve me, too."  
  
"No!" Depth Charge frowned and strode across the bridge to where he had put a few extra cubes to replace the one he had been intravenously feeding the crab while he was offline. "Why didn't you just ask if you wanted another?" he asked as he turned back around.  
  
Rampage's optics were locked on the cube in his hands. "Asking has never helped me before," he said absently. The cube's progress across the room halted, and he raised his optics from it to see that Depth Charge had stopped in his tracks, staring at him. "What?"   
  
The ray shook his head and didn't answer as he handed over the cube, but he wondered if Rampage was even aware of how tragic that statement was, either because that was what the crab really believed…or, because of what had been done to him, it was completely true.  
  
  
  
The room slowly came into focus.  
  
Rampage breathed in just as slowly, letting the air run through undamaged filters to support his beast mode. He lifted one hand, turning his head to watch the fingers flex and curl. There was faint pains at each joint as they bent that warned him not to overexert himself, but the fact that the lingering fuzziness at the edges of his vision was gone told him how much he had recovered. He turned his head to look at his other arm, where he sensed there was something attached to him. It turned out to be a narrow tube.   
  
Ah, yes. Depth Charge had told him he was going to put that back in. His systems had almost rejected the sudden energon influx earlier, and his internal computer began insisting on shutting down. It had been interesting to watch Depth Charge as he had reported what his body was trying to do; apparently, the ray had researched what to do with starvation victims, but he had thought that once Rampage had woken up he could have as much energon as he needed. Too late, he had realized that wasn't true. The most he could do was replace the I.V. line and let the crab recover on his own.  
  
He followed the tube with his optics and saw the mostly-empty cube above him on a shelf. The cube was familiar. Once stabilized, energon left its crystallized form and was collected in cubes like that. Not long ago, he would have done anything to get even one of them.  
  
Starvation does that to a 'bot.  
  
Rampage wistfully looked at the remaining energon in the cube and sighed softly, deciding to leave it alone. The urge to grab the cube and gulp it down was almost overwhelming, but he suspected that it was mostly instinct from his beast mode. The semi-organic stomach deep inside him was completely empty, and it kept insisting to be filled when the rest of him could function just as well with energon no matter how it was received. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd actually indulged his crab form and eaten something…  
  
That was probably because one of the experiments done on him had planted a virus in his internal computer. It had wrecked havoc on his coordination and sense of time, and even after it had been purged from his systems later, his internal clock remained a little off. It was disturbing not to know how much time had passed since he had last regained consciousness. His memory of what Depth Charge had said to him was clearer than the last time, though.  
  
It suddenly occurred to him that he wasn't where he had been when he'd woken up before. It had been light there, and here it was a more comfortable darkness. There had been broken computers and open spaces, but here there was a table and a couple of chairs. And now that he thought to look beyond the energon he craved, he noticed that the room was much smaller. So…was this one of the ship's crew quarters? He assumed that Depth Charge had put him here to get him out of the way, but he had to wonder why he hadn't been put in a cell. Perhaps as a gesture of goodwill?  
  
He lifted his head and looked around the room again. A small computer terminal was set against one wall, next to the table. The door was in the opposite wall, and he had to twist his neck awkwardly to see it. He wouldn't be able to tell if it was locked until he tried to open it. The computer, however…  
  
Sitting up was an effort, but he forced his body to complete the motion. The room spun, then settled around him, and his hands gripped the edge of the sleeping platform to keep him upright. Weakness was not something he was used to, and he didn't like it at all. Weakness was something the scientists had induced, something Megatron had exploited. For a moment, just a moment, he let himself remember what it had been like for his spark to be whole. The feeling of being complete…there was no doubt in his mind who had been worse, Megatron or Dr. Kilju. The ache of his spark being separated the first time was nothing to this torn, empty feeling he experienced now. And the pain of the spark-box. Pain! Just the memory of it made his fingers dig into the metal they were already clenched around, the anger of a tortured animal boiling inside him.  
  
But Depth Charge had the spark-box now. His old playmate had the spark-box, but instead of using it the ray was ASKING for his cooperation. If nothing else, that was a novelty. None of the others who had held his spark-box had ever asked him to do something that wasn't painful, humiliating, or both.  
  
It distracted him from his weakness and the computer across the room, and he jerked out of his thoughts only when the door to the room opened. A familiar silhouette was framed in the light. "Rampage?"  
  
"I'm awake," the crab answered. He stretched his arms, noting how his joints were still painful, even his beast mode's legs burning slightly. When he was finished, he returned to looking at Depth Charge. The ray had taken a step into the room but hadn't come any closer than that. "Afraid I'm going to attack you, old friend? I thought we had come to an agreement."  
  
That provoked another step forward, just to defy the teasing note in his voice. "Don't call me that."  
  
"What? Old friend?" He shook his head. "No. To me, that's what you are."  
  
"I'm not," Depth Charge growled, walking forward to stand over the seated form of his prisoner-ally. "Just because I've followed you doesn't mean I'm a friend," he spat the word, "and I don't want you to mock the word by using it! I HUNTED you. You're a killer, not someone I would call a friend. Get it straight."  
  
Emerald optics studied him as he towered over the crab. "Oh, I have it straight. I'll call you friend whether or not you consider me to be the same. It may profane the word's meaning as you know it, but you're the closest I have to a friend. If I don't have quite the same definition, does it not make the word still true?"  
  
Depth Charge jerked back, taking a step away before he caught himself. "It's not right. I'm NOT your friend, and I'll never BE your friend."  
  
"So? What other use do I have for the word, then? It's not like I use it for anyone else." He sighed. "But if it upsets you that much, I suppose I can refrain from using it in my vocabulary. After all, we will be working together, and it wouldn't do to create unneeded tension. We have enough as it is." His optics lowered to look directly at the spark-box held in the ray's left hand.   
  
Depth Charge glanced down at it, then nodded sharply. If the crab was willing to drop the subject, then so was he. For now. "Yes. You'll need a while to recover from your relapse, but after that you can join me on the bridge. Just remember that I'll have this," he held up the spark-box, "with me at all times."  
  
A faint, bitter expression crossed Rampage's face. "Did you really believe that I could forget?"  
  
"I will use it," the ray warned, and he turned to leave. He paused when he reached the door, however. "Rampage…"  
  
He had been looking at the energon cube again, aware again of how weary he was, but he turned his head in Depth Charge's direction. "Yes?"  
  
Depth Charge hesitated, newly-awakened curiosity warring with the sense that he'd be better off not knowing about Rampage's life. The crab waited patiently since it didn't occur to him to be impatient when he was this tired. "Haven't you ever called anyone else a friend?" the ray asked finally, his voice harsher than he had intended it to be.  
  
Bright emerald optics dimmed to dull green, and Rampage turned back to looking at the cube. It took a moment for Depth Charge to figure out that he had no intention of answering the question.  
  
  
  
The bridge was still a mess.  
  
Rampage glanced at the wire-strewn floor and shot a look at his companion. "Not a tidy person, I see," he commented.  
  
"Don't touch anything," the ray snapped back, but he took a deep breath and visibly calmed himself. Reminding himself that he would have to work with the crab to get the ship's computers online again, he looked Rampage over from head to foot, taking his time. It was an unexpected move for him to make, and the crab tensed defensively. "You'll have to do," Depth Charge said in a tone of voice that conveyed a deliberate amount of doubt for the crab's competence. Rampage's optics went wide in surprise and anger, but Depth Charge had turned away to bend over the nearest computer. "Come here," he ordered carelessly.  
  
His fists clenched, Rampage started forward only to stop short as the distant burn in his spark became a sharp flame of torment. The soft sound of anguish that emerged from his throat was involuntary, and his hands rose to press against his chest above his spark as if he could make the pain stop. Even as he doubled over and moaned, however, he realized that this was a minor pain.   
  
A warning.  
  
"You've made," he gasped, "your point."  
  
"Good." Depth Charge let his hand relax, and the compressed spark expanded again. He could actually SEE the pain leave the 'bot in front of him, and it made him uneasy to think that he'd caused such agony. "Just making sure we have an understanding."  
  
Rampage glared at him, still panting slightly as his body recovered. "I understand completely…" Depth Charge nodded and started towards the computer again, "…Megatron."  
  
The ray whirled to face him again. "What?!"  
  
"You heard me." Straightening up finally, he leaned on the wall and continued to glare at the 'bot who held his spark. "Megatron liked to make sure we had an 'understanding,' too. You remind me of him."  
  
"I'm not like Megatron." A little confused by the comparison, Depth Charge shook his head. "If you try anything, of course I'll use this, but—"  
  
"—but maybe you should remember that it's my SPARK inside that little squeeze-box you're holding," Rampage snarled. "You can crush it casually whenever you want and send me to my knees, and I know it. Do you really think that I can forget that?! Maybe you should find some other way of making sure we have an 'understanding,' because I SLAGGING WELL UNDERSTAND! If you're another Megatron or Kilju, making me scream just because you can, I WILL fight you all the way with this. You want me to cooperate? Fine! I've already agreed to help you! All I want right now in return is that any time you want to make sure I understand something…there are other ways to reassure yourself."   
  
Stunned by his vehemence, Depth Charge stared at the crab. "Like what?" he asked after a moment. "  
  
Rampage blinked, uncertain whether the ray actually wanted to know or not. "Try just holding it up," he said with a touch of dry humor. "When someone holds a piece of your spark up, it tends to attract your attention. Or so I've found," he added when Depth Charge snorted skeptically. The crab studied him, wondering if he would…maybe…where no one else had… "Or just ask me," he said in a low, careful voice. He met the other robot's optics squarely, pushing aside his nervousness at what he was daring. The scientists had treated him like the experiment he was. Kilju and Megatron had treated him with degrading condescension, hardly deigning to speak with him. Jirex had only taunted him. They had controlled him, they knew it, and they didn't even consider any other way to deal with what they regarded as a thing. But Depth Charge had never treated him as anything other than another robot. A dangerous killer, yes, but not as a semi-intelligent experiment. Just maybe, someone would finally act like he had a mind…  
  
Depth Charge looked back at him. Was this some kind of ploy to lower his guard? He steeled himself against the idea; he couldn't afford to delay during a critical moment when action was needed instead of words. But if there was something more to this than that..? "I'll think about it," he said neutrally.  
  
  
  
The crab was across the bridge, frowning as he ran a line-by-line computer code check on the remaining programming in the memory banks. It was boring, tedious, but necessary work, and Depth Charge had delegated it to Rampage because it needed to be done to discover what part of the computer needed repairs next. From the expression on Rampage's face, it looked like they'd be able to take their pick. That wasn't surprising, but it wasn't exactly encouraging, either.  
  
Depth Charge sighed and turned back to what he was doing. Rewiring was tedious, too, but not really that boring since the thought of what a single live wire could do to him kept him alert. Besides, he welcomed the dull work right now. His thoughts needed the time to straighten themselves out.  
  
Looking back at the last week since the breakout, it felt like he had been living in a dream and only now had woken up. Bargaining for Rampage's help had forced his wits to sharpen again, his mind to regain its edge. Part of him had to wonder if the crab had provoked him intentionally, prodding him on purpose to bring him out of the daze he had fallen into after Rattrap's death. The rest of him knew it had probably just been what Rampage did to him. However it had come about, though, it seemed like his mind had snapped back into focus. The sight of the console where Rattrap had been killed now inspired nothing but a faint sense of grief and a burning need for…vengeance. The fear of failure was gone, replaced with that fiery hunger that refused to acknowledge anything but triumph. Perhaps it had been born out of finally admitting the name for his plan, but he knew that his revenge WAS justified.  
  
Rampage was wrong. When the government was corrupt, it wasn't capable of decreeing what justice was any longer. It was simply in need of it. 


	4. Part 3

  
  
Part Three  
  
  
  
Rampage resisted the urge to rub at his optics as he looked up. His optics felt tired, but rubbing at them wouldn't help that any. Staring at wires for cycles on end meant that things tended to blur around the edges when he looked away, and it always made him think that there was oil or something covering his optics. He had to remind himself that it was just his optics playing tricks on him.  
  
Right now a blurry Depth Charge standing on the other side of the bridge was rubbing at his optics, and the crab smirked. The smirk vanished, though, and Rampage glanced back down at the console he was working on. His optics reluctantly refocused on the tiny wires, but that only increased his frustration. It wasn't that the delicate strands of metal were so small that he broke them if his much-larger fingers twitched the wrong way. He could work around that. It wasn't that Depth Charge had crushed his spark earlier and his chest still ached because of it. Oh, yes, he was angry about it, but he had to admit that his intentions hadn't been as peaceful as he'd insisted after creeping up behind the ray. But, no, his frustration sprang from a different source, and Rampage drew in a deep breath to face it.  
  
"Depth Charge…" He hesitated as the ray turned towards him impatiently, watching one of the other robot's hands snapping to the spark-box always kept at his side. He refused to flinch. "What do I do now?"  
  
Depth Charge looked at the half-repaired console in front of the crab and frowned. That was the control section for the Transwarp drive. There were fried wires that needed replacing, command codes to be reinstalled, and half of the control board was fused. What was Rampage playing at? "What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. The crab barely shifted, his discomfort with the situation more felt than seen, and Depth Charge's optics narrowed. Abruptly, he relaxed again, although he kept his hand near the spark-bow just in case. "You'll probably have to replace the burnt-out wiring before you can reprogram it," he said, thinking that he understood. Rampage wanted to know where to start, that was all…  
  
But Rampage shifted again, looking down at the console and then back up at the manta ray. "All right," he said quietly. "But how do I…where do I…" his words slid into mumbling, and an intense emotion swept through him. He had hardly ever felt it, so he didn't know what it was called. The only other times he had experienced it, anger and pain had been the foremost thing on his mind, but he couldn't deny it now. Shame made his words trail off and his optics unable to meet the ray-bot's.  
  
"What?" Depth Charge asked, suspicion entering his voice again. He had to admit there wasn't any other situation to compare this to, but something about the crab's response rang an alarm in his mind. Strange behavior, if working together wasn't strange enough…it came to the ray with a shock: Rampage was embarrassed!   
  
But WHY?  
  
The robot in question toyed with a pair of wire-cutters, fighting a battle he wasn't used to fighting—a battle with himself. Part of him sneered at the humiliation flooding him, insisting that it wasn't his fault and he couldn't possibly be blamed for it. What did the opinion of anyone else matter? They would think what they liked, and it wasn't like anyone really gave a slag about him, anyway. Why should this cause any emotion whatsoever in him?  
  
But another part of him curiously studied what the past days had been like, realizing that Depth Charge might be wary and cold, but also an ally. And having an ally was something totally different for him. Why should he care what this ray-bot thought of him? Oddly enough, the answer was both simple and complex: he had to work with Depth Charge to get his revenge on Jirex and Kilju, but he also had the beginnings of a plan…what it might become wasn't even close to completion, and just thinking about it confused him. Pieces were snapping into place, though. He had to admit that a lot of what that plan was based on was speculation and curiosity. There had never been a chance like this, and there probably wouldn't ever be again; why shouldn't he take advantage of it?  
  
Because by taking advantage of it, he had to manipulate Depth Charge in a completely different way than he was used to: using the truth about himself. It was one thing to force the ray to see things he tried to hide, but it was a totally different thing for Rampage to risk exposing himself the same way. He could feel no fear at the idea, but he could feel this emotion, this shame…because he placed more importance on Depth Charge's opinion of him than anyone else's. That was the part that was curious, and the sneering part of him looked upon it as something alien. For now, though, the curiosity won out.  
  
And so he felt ashamed.  
  
Rampage realized that he had been silent for too long. "I…don't really know what to do," he said quickly, finally spitting it out.  
  
The ray's suspicious look turned into a blank stare. "Huh?"  
  
"I've never repaired anything like this," the immortal crab muttered as Depth Charge continued to stare at him, utterly dumbfounded.   
  
That was NOT something he had expected to hear, and Depth Charge wondered wildly what kind of trick this new admission was. It went against everything he knew about the crab for him to expose a weakness! Was the crab trying to delay the repairs by pretending a lack of ability? What could he hope to gain?!  
  
It didn't occur to him to think that it was an honest statement until Rampage's face began to darken with anger. "It's not like the scientists went out of their way to teach me anything, you know," the crab snapped harshly, his voice frustrated and…something else. It shocked Depth Charge again when he recognized the other emotion in the immortal's voice: humiliation. "Almost everything I've learned since I escaped has been self-taught, and there hasn't been much reason for me to learn how to install programs or repair consoles, now has there?! The only reason I've been able to do this much," his fist swept out, and Depth Charge almost lurched forward in sudden fear for the console. They NEEDED that—but Rampage only pointed at it, blazing emerald optics locked on the ray standing across the bridge from him, "is because Megatron once assigned me to monitor duty, and ordered me to fix one of them. And even then I learned because I forced Waspinator to show me how and threatened to kill him if he breathed a word of it to anyone else. How can you expect me to repair something when I don't know HOW?!" A voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to shut up, he was saying too much, but this pocket of fury inside Rampage had been sealed away for too long, prodded too much by Jirex and Kilju's laughter. "I don't even know what some of these words mean," he gestured at the console screen, his pent-up anger silencing the little voice as the words poured out of him, "and I'm expected to do this? For Primus' sake, Fish Face, I don't even know how to—" He choked himself off before he could say any more, finally seeing the absolutely stunned ray gaping at him. His vision was rimmed with the red rage, the furious tirade of words boiling inside him with an almost physical pressure, and he spun around to face away from Depth Charge with a strangled shriek of hatred. Whether it was directed at the ray or not didn't matter; he'd take it out on anyone at this point, and some tiny, urgent part of his mind kept reminding him that the ray-bot held his spark-box in his hands. So he merely clenched his hands in front of himself and willed the anger to subside.  
  
But it was so hard…and so easy to let go…  
  
Depth Charge stared at the killer crab's back, mind staggering from the sudden ranting. What Rampage had said was too much, too soon. The ray had ventured a few questions, true, and the A.L.H. Research Center had revealed what had seemed like a lot of the crab's past, but now Depth Charge could see that what he had learned was only the tip of the iceberg…and the glimpse he had just be given of the whole was astounding. Yes, he had witnesses some of what Rampage had gone through, but observing that little bit had hardly prepared him for the thoughts now racing through his head. Had Rampage been that deprived?! The idea of lacking the basic knowledge needed to repair a simple console--!  
  
And what was most astonishing was that he had never suspected. The information he had found and been given about the Protoform X project indicated that X was highly intelligent. It had never crossed his mind that the scientists had known that and still never bothered to TEACH the 'bot anything! All this time he had thought Rampage was at the same level he was at…but thinking back…  
  
It hit him with an almost painful shock: this killer, this 'bot he had chased for so long…Rampage was younger than he was. Younger, less experienced, sorely lacking in knowledge and learning, and yet somehow the crab had managed to convey the feeling that he was older and wiser in a twisted way. How much of what Depth Charge assumed about him was just an image he'd put together on his own? The only time they'd ever really spoken was in battle! Even Cheetor had seemed older in battle!   
  
Rampage's loss of control had been obvious, and even now Depth Charge could see his crab legs shivering as the immortal fought to regain his composure. The surprising insights into the killer's mind and past were like revelations, and the ray shook his head violently, trying to drive them from his mind. He didn't WANT to understand these things! This 'bot was a killer, a murderer, and nothing could excuse his actions! There was nothing that could justify him!  
  
Pity seeped in around the edges of his shock, though, and he helplessly looked at Rampage's back. No, there was no way to excuse what had been done on Omicron or Starbase Rugby, but there was also no way to excuse what had been done to this 'bot. Locked away, tortured, not even taught basic skills, never treated as a person, only a thing…how would he have reacted? What would it have been LIKE to live like that?  
  
Depth Charge couldn't begin to imagine, and he turned his gaze away as if to give the shaking crab some sort of privacy. The waves of fury rolling off of him could practically be felt, but Rampage wasn't attacking him for once. The ray's optics caught on what was probably the reason why, and he shuddered suddenly. The spark core shimmered innocently inside its box, and Depth Charge had to wonder at the sheer violation of another robot he was holding in his hand.  
  
Far too late, he wished he didn't have this new insight. It was somehow more terrible to pity a monster than hate him.  
  
  
  
Rage still lurked in him, but Rampage was experienced at using emotions he could do nothing about at the moment. There would be a time for the rage, a place for the hatred, and neither of them were here and now. Instead, he welcomed the smoldering anger, letting it build higher and higher. It cleared his head of the cluttering thoughts that had filled it since the escape from the A.L.H. Research Center, renewed his focus on revenge.   
  
And it helped dim the humiliation.  
  
The crab silently shook his head as Depth Charge pointed out another code command he didn't understand. Looking through the code commands for parts to repair had been easy; all he'd had to do was look for breaks and scrambled bits in the lines. Now, though, the ray was trying to figure out how much of the reprogramming Rampage could actually do, and from the look on Depth Charge's face, what he was finding out was disappointing. On Rampage's part, each new thing that he had to admit he couldn't do was a burning source of shame. He didn't recoil from it, though—he treasured it, gathering in each shred of emotion to fuel the hatred and anger waiting inside him. He didn't allow any of it to touch his face and change it from the disinterested expression he'd locked on it, however. That, too, he'd learned from experience, and his rage snarled behind the mask at Depth Charge, showing only through his optics, where he couldn't control the emerald fires.  
  
Those brilliant green optics were locked on the ray, giving away the humiliation to Depth Charge. The ray didn't comment on it, didn't try to talk about it or what it had been brought about by. He just quickly and methodically asked questions about what the crab could repair. He tried to pretend that he was dispassionate and removed, but each new question revealed how truly pathetic Rampage's skills really were. Depth Charge thought that his growing disappointment and anger were because this was going to set the repairs back, but he had to admit that some of it was directed at the crab.  
  
And not, he was beginning to realize, because of the normal reasons.  
  
Oh, the hatred was still there, and his anger. He would never forgive Rampage for what he had done and who he had killed, but what he was gradually coming to understand was that this new anger was directed at what had been done to the crab. Pity had mutated into fury that the same people who had made this monster had also abused him. The intelligent mind the scientists' reports had spoken of had been locked away and left in ignorance, tortured and experimented on. And…he had to wonder, and he pushed the thought away even as it occurred to him…what would have happened if those mistakes had never been made? Would Rampage have still been a mass murderer..?  
  
Depth Charge paused in mid-question and shook his head, trying to drive the thoughts, the DOUBTS, away.   
  
In that moment, Rampage struck out.  
  
His fist threw the ray into the far wall, and he stalked after him even as his mind woke from the stupor the rage had lulled him into. It was the hatred walking across the bridge towards the groggy ray-bot trying to get up from the floor where he'd fallen; the rage curled large hands into fists and snarled in anticipation of pain. ANY pain. It didn't matter that this 'bot hadn't caused most of the hatred, wasn't the source of the humiliation, hadn't laughed at him like the others who had caused his pain. Depth Charge was a target, and the hatred flooded Rampage, triggering an instinctual need to kill even as his dulled mind struggled to regain control. Reasons NOT to kill this 'bot--not here, not now--pushed against the rage slowly as if they were mired in glue, and his hands spasmed as he paused, confused, before the ray.  
  
That was all the time Depth Charge needed to gather his scattered wits and compress the spark-box in his hand. Fully, this time.  
  
PAIN! As if his spark were being slashed by a thousand knives! The agony dropped Rampage to his knees as his whole body shuddered, wracked with shocks of pain stabbing outward from his spark, and he clutched at his chest helplessly. The emptiness of his spark core twisted through him until he was doubled over, his forehead pressed to the floor. Some distant part of his mind not paralyzed by sheer torture noted that he was screaming, a high-pitched screech of agony that dropped to a soft moan as the pressure suddenly let off on his spark. The pain singing throughout his body retreated sullenly until only his spark pulsed with its memory, but it took longer than that for his mind to recover.  
  
By the time he had enough control over the lingering pain to lift his head off of the floor, Depth Charge was at the console they had been working at before, conveniently across the bridge and out of reach if the crab tried that again. The silver-blue robot had his back against the screen, though, and he was watching Rampage through narrowed optics. The crab ignored him for the moment, more concerned with locking down the hatred and rage that had started the incident.   
  
The emotions pushed at him, and it was hard to contain them. His rational mind knew he needed Depth Charge, but the killer had been confined for too long. It saw a target, a toy for amusement, and it didn't want to be shoved out of the way. ESPECIALLY after being questioned all day by this same 'bot about subjects that exposed the crab's weaknesses. What did the ray think he was going to do? Laugh at him for lacking knowledge? Why did Depth Charge need to know ANY of this?!  
  
Gradually, after what felt like forever, Rampage fought it down. His optics dimmed to black, then brightened to a calmer green. He glanced up at the silent ray-bot, and his eyes flared briefly before settling again. Yes, he was angry, but it wasn't the consuming fury anymore. Now he just levered himself to his feet and gave Depth Charge a steady, bland look. There was no apology for what he had done, no regret. He didn't know why there should be. What was done was done, and nothing could change that, so why bother trying?  
  
Depth Charge had watched him carefully and seen more than a struggle against pain. Why had the crab hesitated? That hesitation had given him the time he'd need to crush Rampage's spark, and surely he had to know that. Then why?   
  
It could be a trick. It probably was a trick. Then why did he keep thinking that it wasn't?  
  
Whatever was going on, though, one thing was sure. "You're useless with any of the reprogramming," he said bluntly, ignoring what had just happened. The crab's optics blazed again, but Depth Charge continued, "You don't know what to do, and it would take me longer to show you than to repair this place myself. You've already said that you don't know what half the code commands even mean, so there's no point in you trying to reprogram any of the computers I do get working. How much you know anything about the astronomy section?"  
  
Emerald optics lit to a hellish light and then dulled quickly. "Nothing."  
  
THAT answer caught Depth Charge by surprise. "Nothing? Then how did you get to—away from—" He stopped and shook his head, forcing himself to slow his racing thoughts. "You have to know something about it. You stole ships to get to Starbase Rugby," he said the name bitterly, "and off it again. so you must know how to enter coordinates, at least…" The look on Rampage's face made him trail off uncertainly. "…don't you?"  
  
The crab laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "You have no idea how unlucky you are, Depth Charge. Did you think that I chose to go to any of the places I ended up on? No. I didn't. The only reason I ended up on the Starbase is because," his voice sank to a hiss, "the coordinates had been preprogrammed into the ship's computers."   
  
Depth Charge could only stare at him.  
  
Rampage laughed again. "Did you really think that I had gone to Starbase Rugby just to kill YOUR friends? You overestimate your worth; I didn't even know you were chasing me until later! It was pure chance that I ever ended up there! I was originally going to take a trip to some place called Varhale, but the owner of that ship damaged the autopilot while I was killing him. I found another ship to steal with preset coordinates..." He noticed that the ray was still staring at him, and he guessed at the reason. "There was no plot to torment you, Fish Face," he said with gentle malevolence, and Depth Charge flinched. "It wasn't some kind of scheme to single you out. I had no real interest in you until after the Starbase, when you caught up to me on that little asteroid resort…what was it called…"  
  
"Comotria," the silver-blue robot whispered automatically.  
  
"Ah, yes, that was it. Honestly, I didn't even know you had survived Omicron. I thought you had died where I'd left you. It was actually kind of disappointing to know that I hadn't REALLY wiped out a colony single-handedly."  
  
And the crab did sound faintly displeased, making Depth Charge flinch again, horror welling up inside him despite himself as he remembered Omicron. He had been in charge of the colony's Security teams, but he hadn't known how they were supposed to fight against this monster free in their midst. Guilt still ate at his spark as he remembered how they'd died, every last one of them, and X had stood over the crack he'd been too injured to avoid falling into. He'd laughed down at the fallen Security Chief, wedged helplessly in the ground where it'd split open under missile-fire, and then the monster had just LEFT him there, like the robot meant absolutely nothing. He hadn't even been worth the time it would take to kill him outright, and he'd been abandoned to die a lingering death…  
  
The strangled noise the ray made bore little resemblance to a word, and Rampage cocked his head to the side with vicious curiosity. "Come again?" he asked politely, savoring the silver-blue robot's pain.  
  
Depth Charge pulled himself together a bit, enough to say the word more coherently. "Why?" The demand was harsh…but somehow pleading. The question had been asked before, usually right before he attacked the killer, and Rampage had always come up with a new answer for every time, taunting the hunter with whimsical reasons, cruel intentions, and the worst part of it was that he never knew to believe them or not. He wanted an end to the game, to the teasing; wanted it so badly that he ached with guilt and the need to know why he suffered it. He was a word away from throwing himself at the crab. Just one word, if Rampage dared tease him again…  
  
And Rampage knew it. He'd known that bringing up Omicron was bound to bring the ray to the boiling point, and he felt a kind of satisfaction that he was responsible for the slightly unhinged look in Depth Charge's optics. The urge to shrug off the question once more, draw out the ray's torment, was there, but the side of him that could feel things like shame realized that this time the hunter might actually listen to the answer. Why did the killer kill? Before, the hunter had been too intent on the hunt. Now, though, now…  
  
"Why?" he asked softly, watching the ray tense, trying to find any kind of mockery in his voice. "Why NOT?"   
  
Depth Charge's red optics blinked, confusion creeping into his fury as he failed to find even a hint of anything but seriousness in the crab's words. He slumped back against the screen a bit, giving Rampage a suspicious glare. The return question seemed stupid to him, but he couldn't help but answer, "How could you possibly think that MURDER is right? You tore apart the colony like it was tissue and ask ME for a reason why NOT?!"  
  
"Yes." Rampage looked behind himself and sat in one of the chairs that was still intact. It was a careful, manipulative gesture to make himself look smaller, less threatening. The ray had been too angry to think of anything but physically attacking him a moment ago, but he might remember the spark-box in his hand at any point. If he decided to use it, the crab wouldn't be able to stop him. So, he'd have to give him no reason to use it in the first place. "What exactly is 'right,' Depth Charge?" he asked quietly. "Was what the Center did to me 'right'?"  
  
The ray jerked, taken aback but the sudden shift from Omicron to their recent escape. "Uh…no, but—"  
  
"That was what my life was like until I broke out. That kind of torture in the name of science. The only people who ever talked to me where scientists, and most of the time they just talked OVER me, like I wasn't there," Rampage said, still in that quiet tone of voice, the raspy baritone giving depth to remembered pain. "I have no idea how much time passed before a group of them installed a voice box in me—"  
  
"You didn't have a voice box?!"  
  
Bitter emerald optics met startled ruby. "No. My body was custom made, Fish Face. The scientists added what they wanted, when they wanted, and there was nothing I could do about it. I added weaponry later when I had an opportunity to. In a way, forcing me into a statis pod helped with that. My weapons never really fit in with the rest of me until the pod redesigned my body." He snorted and broke eye contact to look down at himself, a hint of old wonder coloring his voice. "It came as a shock to get a beast mode transformation, but dealing with a third mode was easy. The first time they redesigned me so I could transform I thought I was falling apart…"  
  
This time Depth Charge slumped back even further. "You couldn't transform?" he asked weakly, his anger mixing with pity.   
  
"No." Rampage frowned at his memories. "Or at least, not that I can remember. They talked about my spark being in three other bodies previously—"  
  
"Previously?!" the ray interrupted again, hoping he had misheard. "You mean that there were others like you?" He wasn't sure if he was relieved or puzzled when Rampage shook his head slowly. "Then who were they?"  
  
The crab shrugged. "Other test subjects, I suppose. The only result that I know of is that my spark survived when the scientists destroyed their bodies, so they decided to keep me around longer."  
  
"Why?" Destroyed? Rampage made it sound like the scientists had disposed of garbage, not killed off three other 'bots! Was this, perhaps, why the crab had a killer's mind? From learning it from the scientists?  
  
Rampage blinked at the ray and decided there was no reason NOT to tell him the answer. "Because they had done everything they could to my spark already, and they needed to start the physical tests in depth." He waited a moment in case Depth Charge wanted to say something, then picked up the thread of the conversation. "As I said, there were three others, but my memory starts when they activated me. I never even knew that I was supposed to be a Transformer until one of the scientists brought up the idea of giving me a second mode. When they decided to start the physical endurance tests they redesigned me so I'd have a vehicle mode."  
  
"So you just woke up and had a transformation?" the ray hazarded.  
  
Rampage gave him a strange look. "Woke up? Fish Face, they never knocked me out." Shock, pity, and confused anger stared back at him from the ray's red optics, but he merely shrugged in response. "I told you. Physical endurance tests."  
  
Depth Charge shifted uncomfortably, swallowing hard. "Oh. I…I thought that you meant…"  
  
He shrugged again. "So, was it right?"  
  
The ray stared at him for a long moment, wondering wildly if the question was some kind of joke, but Rampage just looked back at him with an expression of mild curiosity on his face. "No! Of course not!"  
  
Rampage leaned forward in his chair. "Then I ask you again, why NOT?"  
  
The subject had wandered so far that he had to pause and remember what the crab was talking about.   
  
And then he didn't know what to say.  
  
"The first person I killed," Rampage said slowly, in a low, almost dreamy voice, "was the intern who hadn't secured one of my wrists tight enough. The reason I noticed it was because he had opened up my chest to work on the nerve wiring, and he tweaked the wrong one. My arm jerked…and I felt the strap holding it down loosen. The intern hadn't noticed, and I remember working my arm free as he began welding clumsily, occasionally burning my spark so he could watch it heal. All I wanted to do was make him STOP…so I grabbed him by the throat and slammed his head into the lab table I was secured to until his neurocircuitry was scattered across the room. And for the first time," he breathed, green optics distant, "something those scientist did actually felt GOOD. They died, and I could feel THEIR pain. THEY were the ones screaming for the agony to stop. But to me…to me, their deaths brought me to the heights of pleasure. When I found more robots, their anger made me happy. I didn't know why they were angry at me or what I had done, but I could feel their rage, and it felt good. And when I killed them, their fear was like a drug that I couldn't get enough of." He sighed wistfully, seeming to return to the present, where Depth Charge gaped at him in mingled horror and anger.   
  
"Do you understand now, Fish Face?" Rampage asked. "You want to know why I kill, and I want to know why not. Because if what the scientists did was wrong and caused me so much pain, yet no one stopped them, why should I stop what causes others pain? It brings me pleasure, so why should I stop? It's not right, perhaps, but when has that ever mattered? The universe is not a fair and just place, despite what you want. I didn't even know what murder WAS when I was on Omicron, Depth Charge. Could I have been considered a murderer, then? I didn't know what I did was wrong because it was no more than what had been done to me. And you can tell me now that it's not right, but I stopped caring long ago when I couldn't even scream at what they were doing to me. Right and wrong are mere myths that I never had a chance to believe in, and I refuse to live my life by myths. Why, Fish Face? Because other people are nothing but experiments to me, just like I am to them. So why not?"  
  
Depth Charge stared at the immortal robot sitting in the chair for a long, long time, his mind turning over what he had said. His first instinct had been to shout that Rampage was wrong, what he'd said COULDN'T be correct…but the ray, too, was intelligent, and that intelligence was as much a curse as a blessing. He couldn't help but think over what Rampage had said, and the more he thought, the more confused he became. His morals met the brutal simplicity of someone who couldn't afford to have them.  
  
It wasn't an experience he liked.  
  
The worst part about it was that Depth Charge KNEW--not just thought, KNEW--deep in his spark that having morals was right, and he didn't know what to do about it. This was Rampage sitting here in front of him! Rampage! X! The 'bot who had murdered Omicron…without knowing that it was murder, his mind added reluctantly before he could regain his righteous fury at the killer and ignore everything he'd said. So he could only look at Rampage helplessly, the words he needed hovering just out of reach.  
  
Not that he thought they'd do much good. What was the point of discussing ethics with a monster? But this monster had been made by monsters, and despite all the rough edges and harshness he showed to the universe, Depth Charge was a Maximal. He had to try…something. For no reason other than to spite the utter disdain in Rampage's voice when he'd spoken of things the ray believed in.  
  
Across the bridge, Rampage shifted in his chair, then got up abruptly. He gave Depth Charge an even look when the ray's hand tightened on his spark-box. "Since there seems to be little use for me here, I'll be in my quarters if you need me," he said with mocking courtesy, referring to the room he'd been using to recharge in. He turned and headed for the exit.  
  
Depth Charge watched him go, but cleared his throat. The crab glanced back at him, and the silver-blue robot tried to keep his voice indifferent. "Do you know why Rattrap and I brought you along when we broke out of the Center?"  
  
This time the ray had been the one to change the topic unpredictably. "No…" the killer said warily, wondering where this could lead.  
  
"Because it was right," Depth Charge said softly. "And you're more than an experiment."  
  
Rampage's optics went wide in surprise, but Depth Charge quickly turned his back to start working on the console again. He felt a vague kind of victory that the crab was on the other side of the verbal war they seemed to be in, but, more than that, he felt satisfaction when the thoughtful silence at his back remained unbroken by any sort of argument as the other robot's footsteps retreated off the bridge. Either Rampage had shrugged it off, or he was actually thinking it over.  
  
Whatever. At least he could repair this console in peace, which gave him time to think about what the slag they were going to do. The supply of energon they had would only last so long. It had been meant for an entire crew, but the crew had been living off of it before now, too.  
  
Those blasted scientists! If they hadn't locked away Rampage's mind for so long, he'd be more helpful right now. But he simply didn't know enough about the repairs to do…to do…  
  
Depth Charge paused and narrowed his optics, pursuing the thought. It skittered on the edges of his mind, staying just out of sight. Something about…Rampage didn't KNOW enough. It wasn't a lack of intelligence, but a lack of knowledge. So maybe—  
  
His optics narrowed even further.  
  
--that could be taught. All Depth Charge would have to find was some of the repair guides! Surely ALL the computers weren't missing as many files as the one he was working on, and if he could find anything to do with the most basic repairs, Rampage could work from that.  
  
He got up and started to stride across the bridge to check another computer, but his next thought brought him up short:  
  
Rampage didn't have a download jack.  
  
That was part of the reason he couldn't help with the reprogramming. Most of the programming codes were redone by connecting the robot mind and computer, launching the robot into a 3D cyberworld where the work could be done easily. But the connection was made using a download jack located in most Transformers' wrists or temples, and Rampage had mentioned that the scientists had custom-built his body. Apparently they hadn't felt their experiment would ever have a need to use one, and the statis pod hadn't given him one…  
  
Frustrated, Depth Charge stopped in the middle of the room and looked around at the shattered computers. There was no way in the Pit that he'd ever be able to repair everything by himself before they ran out of energon, and if Rampage couldn't download the manuals, he wouldn't be able to learn how to help, so—  
  
He glanced around again, and this time his optics caught on something.  
  
  
  
Rampage was trying not to think anymore. Instead, he was sitting in a chair by the table counting ceiling tiles when Depth Charge gave the door a knock and opened the door without waiting for an answer. The crab snapped upright in his chair and started to snarl something about privacy being an option, but then he saw what Depth Charge was carrying in his hands.  
  
Datapads. Six or seven of the little datapads used for transferring information, distributing orders, and entertainment. He couldn't imagine why the ray was dumping them on the table in front of him, and for a moment he could only blink at them in mild bemusement. "What in the Matrix?"  
  
Depth Charge stepped back, attempting to smother his sense of glee and replace it with a slightly more serious attitude. "You don't have a download jack. Fine. There's nothing I can do about that. But you CAN read, so there's no reason that you can't learn manually how to repair the computers and reprogram them."  
  
Rampage's face went blank with astonishment. "But I…I told you, I still don't know what a lot of words mean—"  
  
Another datapad got thumped down on the table. "I found a dictionary for you. If you have questions about anything else, I'm sure that I can answer them."  
  
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to make his mind work. "But I—"  
  
"I found these, too," among the crew's belongings, but they didn't need them anymore. "They're books. Classics from at least five different planets. You can practice reading by going through them." Three more datapads joined the pile, and Depth Charge couldn't help but feel smug at how stunned the crab looked at the moment. Not only had he been forced to admit how little he knew, but now he'd have to try and catch up. This was obviously not what Rampage had expected, in any way, shape, or form!  
  
"But I—"  
  
"I can't repair everything by myself," Depth Charge once again interrupted to say. The urge to laugh at the crab dissipated as he remembered how he had arrived at this solution. "You have to be able to help me, and this is the only way to show you how to do anything besides taking the time to do it myself. We don't have that time. And since you're just sitting around anyway…"  
  
That earned a glare. "I'm not—"  
  
The ray cut him off again. "There's nothing that can justify what those scientists did to you," he said quietly, "but I'm not one of them. I can think of several good reasons not to be doing this, and the only reason I am is because I need to get to Rarmet. If you don't want to do this, that's your choice, but then don't talk about what they did to you when you're doing it to yourself." He turned and walked out of the room again, leaving the crab to stare after him.  
  
Rampage continued to gaze in that direction for a time, but eventually he looked down at the datapads on the table.   
  
Perhaps Depth Charge…just this once…  
  
He picked one up and turned it on curiously. A dictionary, hmm?  
  
…was right. 


	5. Part 4

_(Many thanks to GigaBomb121 for reminding me that this fic existed, and I should really get off my aft and write more of it.)_  
  
  
  
Part Four  
  
  
  
There were footsteps coming up the corridor again. Depth Charge glanced up and nodded to Rampage wordlessly as the crab walked onto the bridge. Rampage absently nodded back, most of his attention on the datapad in his hand, and the sight inspired a bit of tired humor in the ray. This was the fifth time today he'd seen Rampage on the bridge, and he could predict how far the crab had read through the repair manuals by it. Rampage would come in and find the console each specific manual focused on, look it over, ask a question or two, and then leave again.  
  
And if this was the fifth time, then he'd be looking at the Astronomy section. Depth Charge kept sorting through the spare wires he'd piled on a chair to give the crab a chance to examine the console closely before he started working on it again. His thoughts were on other things, however: if Rampage kept up this pace of learning, their energon supply was just barely going to stretch. Well, that depended on where the closest planet or space station was. Right now the Astronomy systems were so scrambled he had no idea where they were, but if worse came to worst they could always set a course towards a known trade route, activate the emergency beacon, and go offline to save energy. The only reason the emergency beacon wasn't on right now was just in case the Center would be the ones to find them. At least near a trade route, it was more likely a merchant ship would be the one to track them down.  
  
Depth Charge hoped so, anyway. If it came to that, they weren't really going to have a choice who picked them up. They wouldn't even have a chance at doing that if they couldn't repair the crippled Cutting Edge before they ran out of energon, and THAT depended on whether or not Rampage could learn enough from the repair manuals to help him.  
  
It was scary how fast the crab was going through them for someone who wasn't that good at reading, and the implications of that were staggering. Depth Charge knew how fast HE would have been able to learn by just reading through the repair manuals, and the rate Rampage was apparently reading at was about three times what the ray estimated he himself could do. Even that wouldn't have been frightening except that Rampage had made it obvious he could comprehend what he was reading; the questions he asked Depth Charge each time he came to the bridge were almost beyond the ray's own understanding of the computer systems. Questions of curiosity and definitions he could deal with easily, but he'd been dumbfounded when the crab had asked him about the particular set of the quantum math theory that made Transwarp drives possible. There had only been a vague outline of it in the navigations manual…  
  
What scared Depth Charge wasn't that the crab was learning so fast. It was that Rampage was applying the knowledge immediately and to a degree that was far beyond his own abilities. He had known that the scientists had designed Protoform X to be intelligent, but he hadn't actually known HOW brilliant a robot they had ended up with. And here he was, helping a genius learn. It would have been humbling if the idea of a helping a psychopath wasn't so horrifying.  
  
"Where's Rarmet?"  
  
The question interrupted his absent-minded sorting, and Depth Charge looked over at his ally of an enemy. The crab was sitting in front of the damaged Astronomy console, looking through multiplanar star maps. Each plane had a single star on it, and resulting morass of intersecting planes created a complex map that allowed space travel. Precise mathematical calculations could be made using the coordinates of the intersections that allowed a ship to navigate the empty vastness of space and arrive exactly where it was supposed to. Unfortunately, only someone with a firm grasp of the mathematics involved or undamaged Astronomy section of a ship could calculate coordinates that precisely. Lacking either of those, Depth Charge had been hoping to simply get as close as possible to where he wanted to go.  
  
Of course, he hadn't realized how intelligent Rampage was at that point. If he explained what he knew of the theories, it was likely that the crab could get them closer to their destination than he could by himself. "Sector 341-B6-2, Plane 78-C," the ray answered, abandoning the wires to walk across the bridge and stand a careful arm's length behind Rampage.  
  
The crab barely noticed, caught up in examining the star charts. He had seen them before, but never before had he been able to understand them. The knowledge was like a breath of freedom he'd never been able to taste, and he wanted to push the limits.  
  
Because the ship had been hit right before its Transwarp drive had engaged, its location was unknown. But if he could just figure out how each of the stars' planes intersected, he should be able to pinpoint where on the maps they were. There hadn't been much in the manuals about how the maps worked, but he knew that there had to be a method to how they were used. Well, okay, so if the basic idea was to get from point A to point B across a three dimensional chart, the same theories should apply whether or not the chart had a star on it or not. If point A was known (the Center) and point B was not (their present location), then he'd have to reconstruct the path they'd taken between points.   
  
Calling up a viewscreen of the stars surrounding them right now, Rampage compared it to what the star chart of the Center's coordinates looked like. His first problem was that he only had a picture of the stars around point B. He'd have to try and construct a 3D map out of the two dimensional picture in order to use it in calculating the path from point A to here. The question was, how could he do that? There was no way to tell with a computer this damaged how distant each star was from him, so any map he'd come up with would be only a vague idea. Unless he attempted to measure the distance using lightwaves, but even that would be hypothetical at best since he didn't know what ages the stars were. It would give him a 3D map to use, but it would be unreliable…  
  
"How long would it take you to do all that?" Rampage whirled around in his seat, green optics wide in complete surprise at the question spoken into his audio. Depth Charge straightened up from where he'd been leaning over the crab's shoulder and gave him an expectant look. "Well?"  
  
He hadn't even realized he'd said anything out loud. "Uh…a day or two," Rampage guessed, looking between the ray and the star charts he'd been studying. "Why?"  
  
Depth Charge folded his arms across his chest and did his best to look neutral. "Could you get us from here to Rarmet?"  
  
Rampage's brow furrowed, and he swiveled to look at the maps again. Point B to point C would be easy, assuming that he could figure out where point B was. Once he did that, finding a route to point C would just be repeating the math. "Yeah."  
  
"Are you sure?" When all the crab gave him was an annoyed look for questioning him, Depth Charge nodded. "Then do it."  
  
He had been working on the math for the sake of solving a puzzle a moment ago, but getting ordered around by his old playmate made him balk. "Fish Face, it'd be easier just to repair the console and let it do all the math."  
  
The raybot gave him an odd look, dropping the neutral mask. "It'll take close to a week to repair that section, and even then I wouldn't trust any coordinates it gave me. If you can really figure out where we are and how to get to Rarmet from here, it'll give us that much more time to spend patching up everything else." He almost added something else, but he turned and walked away before he did.  
  
He wasn't about to reveal how much more Rampage had done in a few minutes than he'd done since their escape. The crab was lacking in experience and still painfully ignorant, but improving at a terrifying pace. It'd be best if Depth Charge just got out of his way and watched him closely.  
  
Very, very closely.  
  
  
  
"Hey, Fish Face!"  
  
"NOW what?"  
  
"What's a huckleberry?"  
  
Depth Charge peered out from underneath the navigation console. "A type of Earth fruit."  
  
"Oh." Rampage gave the datapad beside him a baffled look while he automatically installed, tested, and filed away the programs on the newly-repaired section of the weaponry console. By now he could do it while recharging, but it was something that had to be done by one of the two 'bots, and Depth Charge was still faster at repairing than he was. So Rampage practiced reading and ran program tests. Apparently he still needed the practice, too, because he didn't understand much of this so-called 'classic' literature. Since he didn't understand, he asked lots of questions and had discovered something to distract himself from his growing frustration with his own confusion: even when he was constrained from not attacking the raybot, it was still fun to irritate him. "I don't get it. Why is this book about a piece of fruit?" he asked in his most innocent voice. It was a legitimate question, but it was also the fifteenth question he'd asked within the last three minutes.  
  
Depth Charge's voice had a noticeable edge to it. "It's about a human child."  
  
That's what he'd thought, but then why was he called Huckleberry Finn? "So the human had fruit on him?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then why is he named after a piece of fruit? For that matter, why does a human have fins?" The crab punched a key viciously and snorted. "I've never seen a human with fins before."  
  
Depth Charge looked out from under the console suspiciously, but that only confirmed that Rampage was being serious. Disbelief fought with curiosity, and disbelief won out. "That's his NAME." That earned him an exasperated look from the crab, and he had to stop and think out what he was trying to say. It was something that was obvious to him, but to a 'bot who'd never been in a social situation with humans, it probably WAS a new concept. "Humans don't name themselves like Transformers do."  
  
Rampage tilted his head, the question obvious.  
  
"Look, our names mean something, right? Waspinator was a wasp, just like Scorpinok was a scorpion and Rhinox was a rhinoceros. Quickstrike had his speed in the draw, and Silverbolt had that whole 'fast and pure' thing." The crab made a face, and Depth Charge gave him a stern glare before he could say anything snide. "The point is that our names describe a function or aspect of ourselves. Right?"  
  
The crab shrugged, thinking wryly that Megatron's name could have only referred to his ego. "Okay. So what?"  
  
"Humans don't name themselves like that. They just call themselves whatever they feel like, and it doesn't necessarily describe anything about them."  
  
Green optics lit up with understanding. "So this Huckleberry Finn human…"  
  
"Is just a human."  
  
"Slagging humans. Even their names don't make any sense," Rampage grumbled.  
  
Depth Charge stifled a chuckle before it could escape him, ducking back under the console to hide his amusement at the crab's irritated comment. Some lifeforms really were universally frustrating. "When did you see any humans, anyway?"  
  
"Seventh planet in the Beryl solar system had a nice little isolationist community on it. The fleshbags set themselves up and declared it a human-only zone. The arrogant bunch of organics even tried to evict ME." The crab chased a broken line of code down and corrected it, then reinstalled the program. "Now it's a corpse-only zone," he added with a chuckle.  
  
Silence met that comment. Rampage didn't notice. He was intent on trying to puzzle out the story about a human without fruit and fins. The language was some kind of local slang that required looking up in his dictionary every other word, and even then he couldn't seem to grasp what was going on. It didn't help that his knowledge of human culture was limited to a few brief, bloody encounters and what he'd found out from Megatron. "What's makes a piece of literature classic? That story from the Kieta star system was pretty good, but the one before it was almost as bad as this one. Either I'm worse with grammar than I thought, or this translation is faulty. It couldn't possibly have been this bad in its original language." He paused and thought that over. "No, wait, this is humanity…"  
  
When Depth Charge didn't say anything, he shot a glance toward him only to find the ray staring at him strangely. "What?"  
  
"When were you in the Beryl system?" Depth Charge asked slowly.  
  
Why was the ray asking that? Hmmm, and with such a serious look on his face, too. "What does it matter?" he asked back with casual indifference that he didn't feel in the least. Something felt odd about the question, full of the ray's uneasiness. It set him on edge, and he immediately squashed the rage always itching at his fingertips. Now was not the time to free the hatred smoldering in his hollowed spark and harvest pain in return. He deliberately turned his optics back to the weaponry panel. "I'm almost done with this," he said as if he hadn't noticed the tension surging through the raybot. "I don't think the cannons are going to ever fire at full-power, anyway. Three of them are missing completely, and the others took collateral damage." Like it mattered, considering how much punishment the ship's reactor had taken. He'd be surprised if there was any power left over from running the engines and life support.   
  
"Rampage." Depth Charge's voice had gone steely with tightly contained anger. "When?"   
  
One huge red hand curled inward into a fist, the joints crackling with the urge to swing it at metal of blue and silver. He never shifted his gaze from the screen with its scrolling lines of code, but he wondered idly if the Maximal was angry at himself for not knowing about another massacre or at him for being the killer. Sometimes Depth Charge's mood swings really were a mystery to him. What was the point of getting angry about something he hadn't known about until now? It didn't change HIM any. He had killed them all. He was still who he had been a few minutes ago. Did a corpse or three hundred more really make any difference?  
  
Apparently it did, because across the room he could feel the ray's anger snap at him like a living creature. And like a living thing, it worried at him, teasing the monster until his fragile hold on his own nature began to fray. It would be so easy, so very easy, to let go.  
  
Rampage stood abruptly, and across the room a hand tented over the spark-box sitting at Depth Charge's side. A silver palm rested against the flat metal of its top, and the spark core inside it felt the shift in weight. The hand didn't press down…yet. But the weight was there, and inside Rampage's chest he felt the ray's touch more intimately than he ever wanted to. The crab refused to freeze up at the threat, forcing himself to cover the jerk at contact by straightening his shoulders.  
  
Emerald optics narrowed in visible fury, both at the raybot's warning and with his ever-present anger, he turned to look sidelong at where the Maximal now stood beside one of the computer banks. His body vibrated, clenched fists at his sides, but he didn't turn to meet Depth Charge head on. It would have been too tempting, and his self-control was growing ragged. He had had a hard enough time stopping at just getting up from his seat. "I'm going to go work on star maps," he rasped in a voice made gravelly by building hate. "I've managed not to attack you for three days, five hours, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds, but you're not helping any."  
  
His sudden abandonment left the battlefield empty and Depth Charge gaping at the crab's back as he stormed from the bridge. The move was unexpected and deflated the ray's tension as quickly as a punctured balloon. He was at a loss, staring after Rampage like an idiot until he finally shook himself loose of the shock.   
  
The Maximal looked down and regarded the spark-box under his hand thoughtfully for a moment before carefully picking it up and placing it on the floor next to where he had been working. Before settling down to slide under the console again, he gave the door of the bridge an automatic glance. It stood open, the circuitry that had once slid it closed pirated for more important usage. Depth Charge wished that he could close and lock the entrance. It would make him feel more secure, lying vulnerable on the floor with his hands buried in wiring and his mind lost in confusing thoughts. It would be the perfect time for Rampage to sneak up on him…  
  
He found his hand resting on the spark-box again, fingers nervously sliding back and forth on its top, and he stilled them with an effort. He'd seen the tiny jerk in Rampage when his hand had come down before, had seen it before, and he wondered what it was the immortal felt in that nano-second before there was crushing pressure. Was the sensation pain, or—he looked down at his hand and removed it hastily --was it more of a caress? His own spark shivered at the idea of someone's hand so close, and he couldn't imagine what it was like for Rampage either way.  
  
Yet for every time he picked up the spark-box while working, the crab didn't complain. And for all the hate he saw in those green optics every time he inflicted pain on the crab, Rampage didn't protest his imprisonment, however unorthodox it was. For three days, five hours, and…fifteen minutes, Rampage hadn't even made a hostile gesture besides those directed at the author of that particularly maddening book. Not a single one had been directed at him. Depth Charge actually had to pause and think back on it, a stripped wire held delicately between his thumb and forefinger as he reviewed the crab's actions. The closest he could say the Predacon had gotten would be the annoying multitude of questions asked at every opportunity, and even then Rampage had only been trying to provoke a response.  
  
So why the near-violence now? He'd seen the clenched fists and the eagerness to attack. True, the crab could have abandoned the idea the moment he felt a hand on his spark core, but somehow that didn't quite make sense to the Maximal. He knew Rampage's mind as well as any could claim, but he was beginning to think that his knowledge didn't amount to much at all. The only motives he could assign to the crab's actions lately didn't fit with his words, and Depth Charge didn't understand in the least.  
  
He twisted the wire together with its mate and pushed out from under the console, a feeling of determination replacing his puzzlement. Okay, so he didn't understand. Fine. Time for a little turnabout in the crab's question game.  
  
A query to his internal computer informed him that Rampage was half the ship and a few levels down from where he stood, so he strode off toward him, shoving the spark-box into a subspace pocket on the way. Despite his paranoia, Depth Charge knew that the crab couldn't sneak up on him any more than he could sneak up on Rampage. Without the energon interference they'd encountered on Earth, they both knew exactly where the other was within a certain distance. Depth Charge's computer locator had long ago been fine-tuned to a specific spark's frequency, and despite its scrambled response to being so close to the core of the spark in question, he'd found it worked well on the ship. However, he regarded it as a mixed blessing. Relying on it would be folly, since the crab had bypassed his sensors in the past, but it was too important to ignore. Depth Charge had gotten the specific equipment and programs installed after Omicron, but Rampage just naturally seemed to always know where his old playmate was. They had never spoken of it, but the ray suspected it had to do with some sort of spark sensitivity. He had no real idea of its limits outside of the ship, which made him slightly uncomfortable.   
  
Well, it made finding each other on the ship easy, if nothing else, and the Maximal didn't even bother knocking on the door he ended up in front of. Why bother? The crab knew he was there. Hence the reason he stood in the shelter of the doorjamb to let his optics adjust to the darkness inside instead of simply stepping inside and exposing himself to whoever might be waiting to clobber him.  
  
But Rampage was obviously not even going to look up from working to acknowledge him. Back to the door, he ignored its opening. As always, Depth Charge could only stare for an instant at what the crab had done to what had been the crew's recreation room: monitors relocated from all over the ship had been arranged in a sprawling chaos that only made sense from the center of the room. There stood the dim silhouette of the Predacon who had created the pattern, laboriously linking each viewscreen to a visual feed from the Cutting Edge's outer hull until he was surrounded by a million stars. Rampage took the place of the starship here in this room, hanging in the middle of space in an unknown location, gradually mapping out the faint light of the void onto planes he could use in plotting a course. It was tedious work that the crab had temporarily escaped by finding something he could do on the bridge.  
  
Until, Depth Charge realized, something had driven him away.  
  
"You're letting in too much light," Rampage rumbled when it was clear that the ray was going to stand in the door until he said something. "Either get in or stay out."  
  
Depth Charge hesitated. Previously, the Predacon had always come out into the hall when he was here. Stepping into the dark room seemed more like walking into enemy territory than he liked, but the crab didn't even turn around as the door slid closed and returned the room to spangled black. The ray leaned back against the door, a statue of blue-silver metal and magenta glass glittering with starlight.  
  
In the center of the room, Rampage's body seemed much less reflective. His arms and crab claws glowed dully, as if the reds and purples gave up their color sullenly to the light. He moved, however; constantly shifting to bring all his attention onto a new star, his hands busy as he recorded the measurement of lightwaves, his mind split by mathematical formulas, plans, the relevance of Huckleberry Finn, and the invader in his starry night.  
  
"How," the invader said, his words slow and laden with thought, "am I not helping you?" It was more of a demand than a question, but the question wasn't what he had originally set out to ask. Borne of vague insight and a sudden desire to turn the crab's words back on him, it hung in the air between them. He could practically feel the other 'bot considering them, turning them over and over as if looking for a hidden meaning before deciding they weren't worth replying to.   
  
The silent dismissal brought suppressed anger to the surface. "Helping you with what? Not attacking me? If you're trying to blame me for what you are, you're wasting your breath and my time. I'm not going to fall for whatever mind game you're playing. I know there's no one to blame but you, X, for each life you destroyed. You were an experiment, but that's no excuse." The sound of metal on metal echoed as he took a step forward, optics narrowed. His right hand tensed, drawing upward to point accusingly at Rampage's back. What he wanted more than anything at that second was for his gun to be in that hand, but responsibility kept him from retrieving it. He couldn't risk damaging the monitors. "You could have chosen to stop the slaughter at any time, so don't give me some slag about not helping you! What do you want me to do?" His voice took on a mocking note, "Lay down and die? Pull the trigger for you? I'm not going to step aside and let you go free, but I THOUGHT we had a common goal. There's no cause for attacking me right now beyond the twisted reasoning of your murderous spark. What did I do, remind you of past massacres? Is that why I was so unhelpful?" Depth Charge laughed bitterly, thinking about the humans he hadn't known had died at this murderer's hands. "Oh, I'm SO sorry that you find it hard to contain yourself at the memory! By all means, don't hold yourself back on my account!" His face twisted into a furious sneer. "It wouldn't hurt ME a bit."  
  
His wrist twisted, flicking into his subspace compartment and emerging with the sparkbox in hand. All he needed was an excuse, any excuse to use it. The dim silhouette hadn't moved during his tirade, but now it twitched in response. A sliver of green like a mutant star came into view against the black backdrop, and Rampage glared at him over one massive shoulder.  
  
"Do you WANT me to attack you?" he rasped softly, the words savage for how calm they sounded. "I was under the impression that it would be best for me not to, but if you wish it, old friend," emerald fire studied the way Depth Charge stiffened at that term, "I could oblige you."  
  
His fist tightened, just a bit. "I told you not to call me that."  
  
"You didn't answer my question."   
  
The nearest stars' white light shifted, influenced by comparison to the burning optic that seemed to belong in space with them. Depth Charge blinked but couldn't eliminate the illusion that a green tint was spreading through the stars. He made himself think, fingers tense around the metal box in their grip and ready for any move by the crab. Why had Rampage chosen right then to call him 'friend'? The edgy feeling that he didn't understand all the Predacon's motives was stronger now, as if he was missing something obvious. Mind games again; a staple of the Protoform X hunt. The crab always forced him to play, unsatisfied with a mere physical chase. Depth Charge didn't have to participate in the mental puzzles, but the challenge was plain and he wasn't about to back down from it. A few seconds of review made him shake his head a bit, struck by the thought that he hadn't even registered when the challenge had been issued. It wasn't even immediately evident to him what the game WAS, but when he thought about it that wasn't unusual. The trophy hadn't always been obvious when he'd taken on previous challenges, either; he'd often ended up uncovering things about himself. He hadn't wanted to know those things at the time, but he hadn't backed down from finding out when the subtle dare had been given in the midst of their fighting. He wasn't about to begin losing the game now.  
  
The problem was, he was uncertain as to what he was supposed to discover about himself in this particular twist of play.   
  
Metal scraped across metal, and he resumed his previous pose leaning against the closed door with a deliberate slowness that couldn't be mistaken for a retreat. It was thought, not fear, that made his optics evade that glaring emerald fire. There was something, a subtle theme…the crab had left the bridge, but he treated it like it had been a necessary thing done under duress. It didn't make sense to Depth Charge. Opponents came to a battle, and unless one pursued the other, either could walk away from the fight. Always before he had chased the Protoform and been met in return, but now he left. And he left as if he tore himself away from something much more compelling than mere physical battle. With each aggressive stand the ray made, he had always met it, but now he was acting as if he was struggling against—  
  
Magenta optics briefly stared into green, the beginning of understanding flaring at the patient anger found there.  
  
--against what? Why a struggle?  
  
Maybe it wasn't something about himself that he was supposed to find this turn of the game.   
  
Rampage blinked a nod, feeling the shift between them, confusion seeping into the fury. This time he didn't wait for the inevitable questions. The raybot would only work himself back into his blind obsession with justice, and that would hardly serve his purpose. This moment had been days in the planning, after all. He turned back to the star charts as if he felt as casual as he sounded, his voice quiet and serious. "It's like a whirlpool, you know. I'm never very stable to begin with, emotion-wise, like a buoy on a choppy sea. Whatever peace I find is only surface-deep, and it doesn't take much of a wind to bring the maelstrom to light. Emotions are the catalyst of that break of the surface, and once it begins I'm sucked into the resulting vortex. If the winds calm, I'll bob to the surface. If I'm caught up, I'm carried to the bottom with the force of the wind and water. I can feel it happening, but time and again I can only follow the ocean's currents. Sometimes the only way I get back out again is when the source of the wind is dead." He chuckled dryly. "Of course, that's not to say that I don't enjoy the ride or I can't stir things up myself, but it does tend to make thinking difficult. I react more often than I like, at times."   
  
The emerald star flashed at the Maximal again. "I've been trying, Fish Face. But it's harder than you want to think."  
  
Depth Charge did not want to think that. He didn't want to suddenly know this. He drew in a shallow breath and let it out in a rush. "You can feel my emotions." Rampage didn't deign that worthy of reply. That had long been obvious, what with the fact that he sought his victim's fear and had toyed with the manta ray's hatred. That wasn't what was seeping into Depth Charge's comprehension. "You can feel them, and what you feel from me…influences you."  
  
Again, Rampage said nothing. Depth Charge had only restated what he'd just said, and his patience for the conversation was limited. This was something he hadn't been sure about revealing. It was best that he remain silent until the ray completed the thought he'd laid out before him.  
  
Which the Maximal did, slowly and reluctantly, things shifting inside his head in new and disturbing ways. "You're vulnerable." It had struck him earlier how hard it had appeared for the crab to tear himself away from the brewing fight on the bridge, but in retrospect he had to wonder why he'd never seen it. Even in a massively unequal fight, it took a huge amount of damage to make the crab retreat. Why would such an obviously brilliant 'bot walk into situations he clearly couldn't win? Was it because he was eager for his opponents' fear, or because he was helpless to stop? Even the mistake that had resulted in the Protoform's original capture now came under new light. For someone who he KNEW to be brilliant, there had been some exceedingly stupid mistakes, but if some of it had been involuntary…it made sense of so many things, and as he thought of it, something else began to make sense as well. His grasp on the box in his hand tightened fractionally without him realizing it. "The pain stops you, doesn't it."  
  
He concealed a flinch by looking forward again. "Yes." He HATED being weak. Even more, he hated anyone else knowing of his weakness. No, that wasn't quite right. That wasn't why he winced to give away such knowledge here and now. To be specific, he hated Depth Charge to know of his weakness. With others it was merely the emotionless tide of advantage in battle, but with the ray it took on meaning of its own. This feeling, shame, was a foreign entity intruding into him, burying an insidious head into his normal state of being. Only with reluctance had he let himself give before it, and he was beginning to question whether or not he'd be able to dislodge it when it was no longer useful.   
  
But he didn't have time to worry about that. The swirling mass of confusion, anger, and interest from behind him made him want to turn to see how the ray was taking this new revelation, but he stared fixedly at the console in front of him. It all came down to careful calculations, to travel in space and to travel with someone. In both cases, there existed a failure rate. Depth Charge had judged the risk worth taking, calculating that hatred of Kilju and Jirex would keep him from deliberately screwing up the coordinates. That decision was matched by the risk Rampage had just taken. To expose a flaw was foolishness, but that was the point. It went against the mental image the hunter had of the killer, and that could be strong enough to crumble the ray's beliefs. Not all at once, of course, because the Maximal was as stubborn as the rest of his brethren. However, it was a start, like a frayed thread, and it gave him something to ravel at.   
  
If, that is, he had calculated correctly.   
  
A small sound, the scrape of a metal foot against metal flooring, and Depth Charge took one cautious step forward. The dim silhouette didn't turn to face him. "Pain stops the…" he floundered for a word to describe what he was putting together, and settled for the metaphor Rampage had used, "the whirlpool. It stops you from feeling others' emotions?"  
  
He answered the question with his voice pitched low, but not because he meant to sound threatening. The grip on his spark was so tense if his voice was higher the words would end in a gasp. "In a way. I really don't think you know what they did to me, Megatron and Kilju. They tore out the core of my spark. Personalities can be programmed, but have you ever seen someone who's been reprogrammed? Megatron did it to Rhinox before my stasis pod crashed, and he was arrogant enough to believe that reprogramming had gotten rid of the 'bot. From what I hear, Primal actually understood the situation better than him. What's worse is what that stupid saurian tried with Dinobot. He tried to turn my spark core into a drone with vestiges of Dinobot somehow mixed in. Frankly, the thing was a schizophrenic mess when it wasn't in combat." Possibly because bloodlust was one thing programming, body, and spark could agree on, although programming had kept the rest in check by a bare margin. Megatron should have counted himself lucky the Maximals had gotten rid of the thing before it snapped. He twitched, partially at the annoyance the memory of Dinobot brought up and mostly because he could make out exactly how much pressure each finger was bringing to bear on his spark. It seemed he wasn't the only one with unpleasant memories of the Beast Wars. "Programming sets a basic perimeter for a spark, but the spark is what controls who you are. You can't turn a person into someone else, no matter what you try. Even if I were to rip your circuits apart and wipe your programming, no matter what they reconstructed your central functions as, there would still be something recognizable in you. It's very likely that you would end up with the same kind of friends, the same kind of hobbies, the same hopes and despairs. No matter the programming, everyone is defined by their spark. To destroy someone fully, you have to kill the spark."  
  
Ice entered the raybot's voice. "Is that advice for how to deal with YOU?"  
  
He couldn't help but smirk, knowing the Maximal would hear it in the low rasp of his words without needing to see it. "Perhaps. Why do you think no one's ever tried to just reprogram me?"  
  
Silence. Oh, that had hit hard, a verbal sucker punch, and he savored the shock at his back. Why, indeed? Why had the scientists sealed him into a stasis pod instead of physically tearing him apart and shoving his spark in another body to continue the Protoform X project? There had probably, even then, been some consideration in the Maximal High Council about his supposed immortality, but he thought that most of their interest had come later, after Dr. Kilju had time to work on them. Depth Charge, he knew, had lobbied for executing him outright. It hadn't just been the convenience of banishing him that made putting him stasis the best idea. Sure, if he was exiled on a sterile world he could always be retrieved later if he became useful, but on a more practical level, if they pulled his spark out of his body, then they'd only have to find another body to put it in. There wasn't the technology available yet to contain a spark indefinitely outside a body. Although, it would have been interesting had he ended up another Starscream, an immortal spark wandering through space.  
  
Finally, the rusty sound of a clearing throat signaled that Depth Charge had reached the end of that line of reasoning. "You…said that your spark had been in three previous…test subjects." The words were almost dragged out of him, like he was balancing a wide bowl filled to the brim with acid that would be spill if he didn't feel his way carefully. "What were they like?"  
  
Rampage's optics squinted with building pain in his chest, his voice a muted rumble. "The doctors never told me directly. From what I overheard, though, they were supposed to be body shells with little or no sentience. That's why they programmed me to be so intelligent." He said it matter-of-factly, without pride. It was fact, not vanity. "They already knew what I would be like before they put together my circuitry."  
  
Depth Charge dimmed magenta optics, something too heavy to be disappointment settling on his broad shoulders. "The others were insane, weren't they? They knew before they brought you online that your spark was that of a murderer." How long had they known? Before the immigration limit was lifted? Omicron had been a tiny colony until then, the Protoform X project the focus of the settlement until more immigrants were allowed onto the planet. He had arrived in the first wave of people in order to help set up colonial Security. He'd decided to stay instead of return to Starbase Rugby because the place had grown on him, and he'd ended up being promoted to Security Chief for working well with the colonists and scientists alike. The same colonists who'd died; the same scientists who'd set him up for failure. "Primus."  
  
He didn't realize he'd whispered it out loud until Rampage chuckled in response. "Yes, you could say they were playing god, if that's what you meant."  
  
Magenta optics lit, and he started to say something, but it felt like the acid was dripping down his front and burning its way into his head. Depth Charge closed his optics again. An entire colony gone, and it could have been prevented so easily if he had only KNOWN. But he had known what the scientists had told him, and it wasn't until the secret was loose to slaughter that he'd even known there was something hidden in Omicron.   
  
"I don't think they managed to kill anyone. They were only supposed to be body shells, after all, and if they didn't equip me with a slagging voice box, why would they have bothered supplying a temporary test subject with anything potentially lethal?" Rampage breathed in deeply for the first time in what felt like forever, the hand holding his spark having gone limp with desolation. Ah, it was wonderful to taste. Poor Depth Charge just couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the concept of purposefully endangering a colony for the sake of a convincing cover-up. A foolish accident would have been bad enough, but the Maximal High Council had known exactly what it was doing…and had known the risk. To be perfectly fair, the doctors HAD tried to get rid of the bugs in the experiment. "They had my spark and the base emotions that provided, but no logic circuitry to guide it, and that produced psychopaths. With me they intentionally tried to create a sociopath." He laughed shortly. "They programmed me, to the best of their ability to be such a genius that I'd be free of any emotion. They hoped too much emotion and too much logic would balance out. Too bad for them that I'm so far out of the perimeters of 'normal' I fall off both sides of the scale." He shrugged. "Other people approach and I get sucked in. I become a psychopath because of their emotions. On the other hand, if I'm left to myself I turn into a sociopath. Then Megatron comes along and cuts the core out of my spark, and suddenly I'm barely holding on to control because it's with someone ALL THE TIME."   
  
He turned and faced the starlit silver and blue form of the Maximal staring at him. "It's hard," he said directly to the startled optics of his old playmate, "to think when I'm constantly being pushed over the edge." He nodded to the incandescent globe in the frozen raybot's hand. From here, it looked like a particularly brilliant star. "Enough physical pain can sometimes pull me away, but squeezing my spark is different. It's the center of my emotions, and every time it's disrupted…there's pain, but also the complete lack of passion. I don't FEEL anything." Head tilted, he said with a touch of dry humor for the continuing metaphor, "The whirlpool's still there when the pressure's gone, but I'm back on top of the water."  
  
Depth Charge blinked. Slowly, wearily, he nodded his understanding. "And right now I'm your 'whirlpool.'"  
  
"Yes." He inclined his own head, a shadow of dull red and purple. "I'm trying, Fish Face. Just keep in mind that no matter what you happen to think, I'm not completely in control of what I do sometimes."  
  
"I will." He had to think this over. He had expected an argument, a fight, not this systematic dissembling of what he'd thought he knew. What was worse than hating a monster? Pitying him. What was worse than pitying a monster? Understanding him. Because the hatred was still there, and they clashed in his mind to cause confusion he couldn't afford. He had to retreat to think.   
  
The Maximal abruptly turned to leave, but a sudden thought made him pause. "Have you ever felt anything? On your own, I mean."  
  
Had suspicion or puzzlement made that question come out so harshly? Rampage briefly considered not answering, but he couldn't think of any reason why not to. "No." A finned shape was outlined against the light in the hallways for a second before the doors swished closed again, and he finished the sentence softly in the privacy of his starry night, "but then, I have rarely been alone."  
  
Humming softly to himself, he returned his attention to the star mapping. Measuring light waves was simple mathematics, and his fingers did the work with quick, automatic motions. His mind wandered between numbers, reviewing the conversation. He hadn't lied. He had never outright lied to Depth Charge. He frequently told only part of the truth and let assumptions mislead, but he respected the Maximal too much to baldly lie to him. He was a sociopath, and he was a psychopath, and it wasn't easy to control the urge to kill. Emotions were very slippery things to handle, and having the core of his spark in another's hands made it worse. Outside emotions did influence him. It was all true.  
  
However, he had neglected to mention his reaction to all of it. Perhaps it was Depth Charge's fault for not asking, but he suspected that the raybot's ingrained hatred would supply what he hadn't brought up. He had deliberately explained his vulnerability from the perspective of a victim, and the Maximal would probably dismiss it as a ploy to lure him offguard. However, the only one who really knew was him. He doubted that Depth Charge would bring it up. The Maximal thought he knew the crab's mind, but it was Rampage who knew Depth Charge's mind. The raybot was simply unaware of that fact as of yet.  
  
There had been times he'd been alone, usually on the passage from place to place in a starship, and he'd found himself a blank. The first time had been right after Omicron, during his first time in space. Before then, he had never been alone. It had taken him a while to figure out what was wrong, and that he didn't like the sensation. Lacking emotion, he knew logically that it was a hindrance, but he had the memories of fiercely relishing each feeling wrenched from another living creature. What he hadn't told Depth Charge was that he would have to kill everyone who felt anything on an entire planet before he'd be completely free of outside influence. It had taken until Comotria for him to figure out why he'd felt anything at all those last hours on Omicron when he'd thought everyone was dead; there had been one 'bot left alive. One robot, probably unconscious by then, had rippled the waters enough to allow him emotions. He had mistaken that robot's emotions for his own only to find out that on his own he didn't have any. After that he'd begun looking for a method of control.   
  
It wasn't, like he had implied to Depth Charge, that others directed his emotions, or that he couldn't ignore them if he had to. Well, sometimes he really couldn't, but that had more to do with who was influencing him than what. The full truth was that other life forces, sparks or whatever, pulled enough on his that it tipped the balance from logic to emotion, sociopath to psychopath. He could get caught up in the process, but not everyone could break his control. Every emotion was a whirlpool, but getting pulled down into one wasn't necessarily a bad thing when he could stay near the surface. .He just wanted Depth Charge to think that he went under easily.   
  
The careful deception had a purpose. This plan had been going on for a long time, and he was merely adapting it for the situation. This instability of his, after all, was a vulnerable point, and he hated being weak. But there was a way to limit the problem, if he stayed out of the A.L.H Research Center's reach and finished what had started on Omicron. There was a way…  
  
His humming stopped, lost in the artificially created universe of the room, and he gazed blankly down at his hands. They had stilled on the console. The soft notes continued in his head. Had he been alone on the ship, he would have been unable to feel anything at the memory of the tune.   
  
Emotions were a hindrance.  
  
Yet still he wanted them.   
  
  
  
They tried to tell him monsters didn't exist. Horror stories were just that: stories. Nothing like that existed in real life, or so he was told. It was paranoia that made each distant clank harmless, each haunting groan just changes in air pressure, and there was nothing behind him. Whatever fear he'd felt when he hesitated to open a door was laughable because monsters weren't real.   
  
So what was he supposed to do when one day he found himself fighting something that didn't exist? He found himself a bad actor in a worse holovid, shock slowing his reflexes because IT CAN'T BE REAL. But it was killing his friends and coworkers, coming for him and the colonists he protected, and what was he supposed to do? Common sense told him it was a nightmare because common sense knew that this wasn't normal. Stuff like this didn't happen in real life. This was so far away from the idea of normal that common sense went catatonic and he was left on his own. He used to think people in horror stories were stupid, but he'd realized that they were just like him. They were people who'd been told all their lives that monsters weren't real and suddenly had to face the ugly truth:  
  
Their nightmares were based on reality.  
  
He'd done his best with everyone dying around him, their optics wide in utter disbelief that they hadn't woken up, and he'd felt like he was an actor in some cosmic horror story all his own. The star of the show turned toward him, covered in mechfluid like it'd been birthed from the depths of every buried paranoia inspired by dismissed tales, and all he could feel was terror even as his gun raised. The 'bots at his side faltered and failed, and they died as they tried to run away. He stood his ground because fear held him paralyzed, but he kept firing because duty filled the place common sense abandoned. They called his panic courage later, but he'd learned by then not to listen to what they told him.   
  
Only he'd found that he hadn't learned anything, after all. He'd trusted the Center, hadn't he? He should have known better, should have seen that they were telling him another story. He should have seen that the ones who told him to trust them with the monster were the same ones who'd told him the monster didn't exist.   
  
Depth Charge finally admitted that he'd been working on the same panel of wiring without really seeing it for a ridiculous amount of time. He'd been afraid of this happening, but he straightened up and leaned against the wall next to the computer bank with nothing more than a resigned sigh. Cybertronians could exist on energon for long periods of time, but eventually they needed to recharge. Without an offline period, their systems lost efficiency. It didn't matter how much energy they were supplied with; continuous activity wore them out, and they needed regular rest to power down in. Some routine maintenance couldn't be done while a 'bot was active, and all systems needed to cycle through to check for problems or renew parts. For someone with a beast mode, the need for sleep was instinctual. While energon could substitute for long periods of time, Depth Charge had apparently reached the limit. He hadn't taken a break since Rampage had woken up.  
  
Now his head swam with conflicting urges, his systems insisting that they needed to shut down but his mind insisting that he didn't have the time. His body felt like it was dragging, responding sluggishly to what he told it to do. It seemed that he wouldn't have much of a choice in this. He had felt more tired, of course, but he hadn't realized it had gotten this bad until he trudged across the bridge to sit down in front of a console. He wasn't sure he could get back up again.  
  
No wonder he had fallen into depression so easily. A clinical part of his mind analyzed his thoughts since talking to Rampage earlier, and it recognized the downward spiral. Something like this had happened after Omicron, when he'd first realized what the scientists in the Protoform X project had done. He'd labored for days, researching every scrap of information about X and trying to predict where he'd go next. Confusion, shock, and hatred had filled his mind, and after too long without rest, he went numb. His body became so worn out it walled him off from feeling anything but a detached sense of despair. Soon afterward he'd slipped into an exhausted recharge cycle.  
  
But he couldn't take the time to do that now. He had to rewire the weapon's console because the engines needed the power, and then he had to test the Transwarp drive because part of it had taken collateral damage, there was something wrong in the programming in the communication console, somewhere in the mess there was a useable console board he had to replace this one with, and Rampage was definitely lying. There was no way the crab would spontaneously decide to reveal something like that. Although…the situation was different than any they'd encountered before, so it was just barely possible that he'd been telling the truth. Primus, but how could the Maximal High Council have ALLOWED it? What could justify experimenting on a spark? What could justify making a spark they couldn't keep contained, knowing that it was insane?   
  
He put his head in his hands, trying to organize his thoughts. He'd sit here for a while, just a little while, and get rid of this hovering cloud of depression. It wasn't hopeless, and he knew better than to believe what they tried to tell him. It was the fatigue, not him, that was making it so hard to think right now. He'd be okay in a bit.  
  
His internal computer sent an alert, and he acknowledged it tiredly. It took more than he thought it would to sit up straight and pretend to be working at the console as footsteps entered the bridge. They headed for the Astronomy section, passing behind him. His fins vibrated finely, the strain telling, but he held on to grim composure. He'd lock himself into a room until at least his joints stopped burning. He'd MAKE the time for that. As worn as he was physically, the mental lag was more dangerous.   
  
Rampage evidently finished whatever he was doing, and his footsteps retraced the route back to the door. They paused there for the briefest second, but the Predacon left as quietly as he'd come in. Depth Charge slumped again as soon as his locator placed the crab far enough away. He should have known better than to let himself get this depleted. If it came down to a fight right now, his best effort would still only be pathetic. Fortunately, the threat of the spark-box kept his enemy-ally in check. His hand moved reflexively.  
  
And found nothing at his side.  
  
Optics wide, his head snapped around to look, to make sure. It was an involuntary motion, and meanwhile his computer scrambled together a list of what was in his subspace compartment. Both attempts came up blank.  
  
The chair he was sitting in hadn't originally been meant to swivel, but it had also been taller before the explosion had thrown it into the computer bank across the bridge. Depth Charge had welded it to a flimsy base so it would stand upright in front of its console. That base now scraped against the floor as he inched himself around to face the opposite direction. He had been trying to repair the same computer bank he'd untangled this chair from, and he hadn't put anything away yet. He had intended on getting back up again. He had only meant to sit for a short while.  
  
He ended up sitting there for a very long time. Reflected in his optics was a tiny star. 


	6. Project Status: Spark

  
  
_**Project Status: Spark**  
  
Body shells were, in Dr. Kilju's considered opinion, an unnecessary distraction. Some might say that he neglected his own form for the sake of his work, but he abhorred the ornamentation and assorted paraphernalia most Cybertronians indulged in. He simply could not see the point. His body was serviceable, a plain blue that did not fade into the background with no secondary highlight colors to draw attention. He was neither so large as to hinder delicate work, nor so diminutive that he had trouble accessing any equipment. He was the perfect size, within the range of the average body size that the laboratory had been built to accommodate, and he had one subspace compartment. By preference, however, he chose to rely on the automated computer systems to supply him with what he needed. Most of his storage space was taken up by his alternate mode's excess parts; he had long ago decided that wearing one mode while in his other was only a diversion and had modified himself accordingly. He was a nondescript robot to look at, as was his intention, but that was the point. He worked with sparks, after all, and the body shell was merely in the way.  
  
The histrionics were quite disturbing when he was trying to work, too. Reason seemed beyond the subjects, although he thought in a distant manner that they should feel honored to have been chosen for the quality of their sparks. More often than not, they responded to his words with panic and unreasoning anger, requiring restraints for him to work on them. They seemed to have some sort of conviction that he had no right to experiment with their lives, but as he pointed out, their rights were not inherent. The government gave them, and he took them away. The 'bots never took that well, for all that it was truth. Fortunately for his patience in this particular series of tests, by the time they came under his hands there were usually sedatives pumped into their mechfluid at such a high ratio that it wasn't necessary to attempt to speak with them. A few well-placed drapes allowed him to focus solely on the part of the subjects he cared for: the spark cavity.   
  
Really, after all his time spent in the Protoform X project, he had come to realize that the spark was all that mattered in a 'bot. The spark was the vital point, the REAL point, in any robot, and it was thing of tangible fragility. The heaviest armor in every robot was to be found covering it, and once he peeled the thick layers of metal and circuitry aside, it shimmered in a transparent globe vulnerable to any probe he chose to subject it to. He'd spent a quarter of his life in schooling and research just to gain access to this most precious part of all Cybertronian, and for his pains he'd been assigned directly to a mysterious project known as Protoform X. His interest in sparks had been honed into an obsession there. It fascinated him that a spark could be extinguished so easily; that something so astonishingly beautiful could be destroyed with a harsh thrust made him greedy for the knowledge of how hard the piercing must be, how much pressure the outer corona could take before collapsing, what materials the spark would adapt to best around and inside it. With Protoform X's spark alone could he find no limits to what he attempted. His curiosity would finally be satisfied if he could only keep that spark for himself…  
  
But X was gone, his special spark stolen away, and Dr. Kilju noted down yet another spark's demise for his records. He directed the computer to summon a guard to wheel the draped body shell away for recycling, and then he stood there in the stark white lab reviewing. To reproduce the exact circumstances of that immortal life's birth was proving even more difficult that he had original predicted. Weeks had passed, and The Cybertronian High Council was beginning to become impatient. He was the only surviving scientist who had worked on the Protoform X project, but he knew that would not be a shield for much longer; he knew that they knew he had been assigned to the project after the spark had successfully been removed from its body shell and the first set of modifications applied. He had the notes from his colleagues, yes, but there were strange gaps in the procedure. If he could not fill in those gaps soon, the High Council would replace him, in all probability with fatal results.   
  
Such was the price of secrecy.  
  
He acknowledged the very real possibility of his death with the same clinical calm as he acknowledged his current failure. The test subject had died--moving on to the next one. Like all the previous subjects, she was a criminal. The 'bot had been a Predacon once before her own faction repudiated her for her crimes, and it was likely no one would ever notice her absence from the prison facility. She was one of many prisoners sacrificed to this test, both by Kilju and his predecessors in the original project. Dr. Kilju would have preferred to use sparks with less of an inclination for insanity, but prison inmates were a convenient source of strong sparks. It took a certain kind of strength to go against the rules, and strength was what this experiment needed. In time, the High Council was confident that studies would find a way to apply the results to their own sparks. For now, the experiment went on.  
  
The problem being that the experiment was becoming ludicrous at this point. Dr. Kilju personally did labwork still, but he also supervised several lab assistants who he had trained in the procedure, and they were going through the test subjects far too rapidly. At this stage in the experiment, they were searching for a spark stable enough to endure the severing of the connections between it and its body shell, then tolerate being transferred to a machine that would feed it the energy necessary to keep it alive. From there the next stage would begin. The machine had been painstakingly recreated from the blueprints included in his colleagues' notes, but so far no spark had survived being removed from its body shell. They were not meant to, at least in normal Cybertronians.   
  
Frustrated, he barely glanced away from the computer screen when the requested guard opened the lab's door and walked immediately toward the dead shell. The next subject's file lay in dispassionate display before him, and he delayed ordering her prepared for him. What he needed was a 'bot with a strength beyond the norm, but unless he could persuade the High Council to find another source for his test subjects--like a colony, perhaps--then he would only continue to kill off the prisoners. He was steadily becoming convinced that the spark he was looking for would not come from the prison population. Those strange gaps in the Protoform X project's files omitted where exactly the original spark had come from, but he had been led by the previous subject records to assume X had come from a prison. Maybe he had been wrong, however. Maybe his colleagues had been just as baffled as he in their search, but with less support than he could claim now they had been unable to find an alternative source…at least legally. So if they had found the spark elsewhere, they might have feared to record where it had come from.  
  
Therefore, the question remained still: where was this pool of potential test subjects? Test subjects with the strength to step outside society's lines, but whose disappearance would not be questioned? Omicron had been small at the time, and he could not imagine one of the scientists volunteering for the experiment. The subjects would have been brought in, then. From another colony? No, because there was no guarantee that even an enterprising spark willing to take the risk of leaving Cybertron would be strong enough for this. Besides, colonists would be missed if enough of them disappeared. What he was looking for must be right in front of him, but it was so obvious he couldn't see it. Perhaps he needed a break; he'd drop in on one of his assistants and get a new viewpoint on the matter.  
  
He turned away from the computer to do exactly that--and found himself watching the guard leaving the room, taking the dead subject away for disposal. The door closed quietly before Kilju finished processing the implications of what he'd just realized. Without hurrying, frustration gone, he turned back to the computer and tapped into the communications network. He sent an inquiry into it and waited patiently.   
  
He didn't wait long. "How may I help you, sir?" The voice was incurious, the Maximal at the communications console onboard the flag ship having stopped caring about anything but when his shift ended.  
  
"I'd like to speak with Admiral Jirex, please."  
  
There was a brief pause as the 'bot checked his switchboard. "I'm sorry, sir, but the Admiral is currently in a meeting. Would you like him to call you afterward?"  
  
"Yes, please."  
  
"Would you like him to know the subject of this call?"  
  
"Tell him it is a matter of…personnel."_


	7. Part 5

_(For Yana, who picked up on a plot point I thought everyone had missed, and Sapphire, who told me how to upload the punctuation correctly. Sorry about the delay in uploading this here, but screwed up the punctuationweirdly.) _

**Part Five**

"Slaggit…" Rampage tapped the touchscreen with his finger in an exercise of futile hope. It blurred and reformed around his touch, proving that it was receiving input. Unfortunately, that input wasn't going anywhere. AGAIN.

Across the bridge, a silver-blue 'bot looked up from his own work as the crab threw himself back into his chair with a muttered invective against the ship's lineage. "What? What is it this time?"

He glared at the screen without bothering to look at Depth Charge when he answered. "We don't have any more spare console parts, right?"

"No."

"Then I'm going to have to take out this Screen From The Pit," the capital letters where enunciated with the frustration only hours of watching work fail could bring, "and rebuild it from scratch. The output leads are shot." The red-purple 'bot crossed his arms and attempted to incinerate the malfunctioning electronic with his optics alone. "And if it's not the output leads, then I don't having a slagging clue what's wrong with it. This piece of soldered junk metal is going to get pitched out the nearest airlock at this rate, and I'll be the one doing the pitching! Where the slag did I put the welding torch! Rusting hunk of scrap…"

The Predacon twisted to get underneath the navigation console again, and Depth Charge didn't try to hide his weary smile. Somewhere in the past week since they're face-off in the ship's RecRoom, things had changed. It was a slow, cautious change, with misgivings at least on his part, but the ray had to admit it made working together easier. Whether or not that was a good thing was yet to be seen.

It had started very simply: Depth Charge had kept the spark-box tucked away in his subspace compartment, safe from the crab…but also untouched by him. They hadn't spoken of it, but there had been no attacks from Rampage to test the new arrangement. As if in return, however, the annoying multitude of questions about slang and culture from his reading had stopped, and the few times the crab had approached him, it had been over issues that he'd obviously needed help understanding. Some of those questions had turned into discussions. That often helped pass the time as they slogged through the tedious repairs, but time and time again they'd stared at each other in surprise as something one of them said suddenly made them aware that their topic was completely absurd from an outside perspective. Sure, it made sense at the time to talk about the affect Megatron's time-warping plan might have had on the second Great War, but as a discussion between a murderer and his jailor, it was decidedly odd.

Even odder were the delicate skirting of certain topics they did. As a shared experience, the Beast Wars dominated their discussions simply because they could draw examples they both knew from it, but there were other things they shied away from in this unofficial peace treaty. Rampage didn't talk about Omicron or Rugby, or any of the slaughters he'd caused, except in the vaguest terms. Depth Charge, in his turn, didn't bring up the Protoform X Project or any of its personnel, except for careful, neutral questions he really needed answers for. The crab answered the questions like a computer, the sickening facts couched in a voice that dryly reported without a single emotion. The more the Maximal discovered about what had happened, the less neutral he could stay, and he could always tell when his nerves were beginning to fray because Rampage would abruptly stop talking, or even leave the room.

It gave the raybot a weird feeling of power, but one that left him struggling for control. He'd never REALIZED how often he became angry. Granted, he had just cause, but it wasn't an encouraging sign, and he'd had to rein himself in from yelling after the Predacon more than once. If HE couldn't control himself, how could he expect others to? Beside which, he was a warrior. Letting anger control him in the midst of battle was bad enough, but allowing it to direct his thoughts while planning the war was foolishness. Predacons used anger as a weapon, but Maximals could not afford to let their morality slip that far; it led to hatred, and hatred had too many blindspots to lead to victory.

Oddest yet, Rampage had been the one to point that out.

Morality, as Depth Charge had discovered through hesitant probing, was not something Rampage had a great understanding of. Half of the reason the crab had difficulty reading the books from the crew was because he had no grasp of the underlying framework of right and wrong that the characters stuck to. For him, there WAS no morality. He did what he wanted. Right? Wrong? He simply…lived. Without care for what his actions did to those around him, there was no basis for good or evil. That carelessness toward other people made it hard for him to understand how the stories meshed together, the character interactions and social niceties passing completely over his head. The crab's confusion would have been hilarious if Depth Charge hadn't been so chilled by it. From what he could tell, Rampage had little to no experience with living with others, much less Cybertronians, until Megatron forced him into the Predacon ranks.

What Rampage really was, now, was a Predacon. A Predacon who, in the most extreme sense of the faction, would put Megatron to shame. Rampage had literally only the shakiest basic level of conditioning with how to deal with other 'bots before Megatron forced him to become part of the Predacons in the Beast Wars, and for the first time, Protoform X had to work with others instead of merely using and killing them. That required a crash course in social conditioning, and the only community he had to learn from was a group of murderers and misfits stranded on Earth. There were no outside influences. Even the most isolated 'bot in existence on Cybertron was surrounded by Maximals, Predacons, neutrals, splinter factions, offworlders, entertainment, history, and a hundred other things everyone took in without even thinking about it. Rampage had the Predacons, brief contact with the Maximals during pitched battles, some scientists, the victims he'd massacred, and--although Rampage didn't outright say it--one Maximal hunter who wouldn't leave him alone.

Except for those sparse guidelines learned elsewhere, however, Rampage became the Predacon a Predacon would fear. He'd become a Predacon without anything but Predacon values, Predacon ideals, and Predacon motivation. He was a back-stabbing, plotting, murdering 'bot with the lack of morality most Predacons only mouthed because in reality, what the Predacon faction claimed to be wasn't viable. Put two of Rampage in one room, and only one would come out. There wouldn't be a faction, because they'd destroy each other before uniting to take on the Maximals. This was what Rampage had been taught to be, and what every Predacon WOULD be if not for those outside influences he'd been denied. Using what Megatron had to teach him about belonging to a faction, the crab had built an image of a social structure that couldn't exist in society, and his bemusement when faced with the complex 'rights' and 'wrongs' of a wider community explained far too much about the workings of his mind to Depth Charge.

Yes, in theory the crab knew a lot about how social creatures interacted, but he'd never had a chance to apply it himself until enslaved by Megatron. Then his moral barbarism was actually encouraged. With that new insight into the crab's mind, a lot of what Rampage said and did made much more sense. It also made the Predacon's slow changes in behavior more recognizable, the shift from mass murderer to almost civil becoming apparent. The crab was IMITATING him. It gave Depth Charge an uneasy feeling to think that he was being used as an example for how to act, but he'd rather that the crab learn from him than continue to wonder why the things he did were considered 'wrong.' He may have been at a loss for words at the end of their discussion about ethics, but he hadn't forgotten it. Rampage claimed he had no use for morals, but Depth Charge was betting it was because he didn't truly understand them. The crab was a killer, but he was also stunningly intelligent. He HAD to see that the universe couldn't function without something keeping sentient beings from each others' throats.

Maybe that wouldn't matter to an insane 'bot, and Depth Charge wasn't counting on it, but he let the Predacon learn from him. The scientists had kept him ignorant, after all, and look what that had gotten them: a psychotic killer who didn't know what murder was. Perhaps Rampage now knew what murder was, but his depth of understanding was shallow at best. If he could just teach the Predacon that ethics were necessary, that was something won. What, he wasn't sure yet. It was a gut feeling, a confusion of horror and pity when confronted with someone who would kill without hesitation, take pleasure in death, and then ask with childlike curiosity and experience why it was wrong to do something that felt good. Rampage had nothing but his own pathetic excuse for a life to draw on for his ethics, and Depth Charge intended to remedy that. With the knowledge given to him, Rampage's bloody hands would no longer have a shield of ignorance. What the crab did from there would be his choice, with the consequences implied therein. Depth Charge told himself bitterly not to expect any changes…but maybe by educating Rampage, he could return to hate, so much simpler than pity when dealing with the crab.

Then again, he couldn't afford hatred anymore. It was, as their wandering conversation about Megatron had illustrated, a weakness. Rampage had casually brought up a slew of aborted plans by Tarantulas, all turned down by Megatron because he hated the Maximals too much to allow any death that wasn't ironic, excruciatingly painful, or preferably both. Megatron had probably lost the Beast Wars by hating too blindly. The rescue ship might have still come, but Optimus Primal and all his merry men would have been cold slag by then. When Depth Charge expressed disbelief (more like a doubtful snort between muttered curses at the computer he'd been working on at the time), the crab explained the simple physics of hitting an already-unstable cliff with one of his missiles. Boom. No more support for the Axalon, no more Axalon, no more protected base for the Maximals, and the Predacons could have picked them off at their leisure. It was how the Predacons had eventually forced the Maximals to take shelter in the volcano, but the idea had come about long before Ravage's arrival. Why had Megatron turned this plan down?

As far as any of the other Predacons could tell, it was because it didn't involve irony. Since none of them had ever understood the tyrant's sense of irony to begin with, they simply scrapped the plan and ended up using one that failed miserably. Tarantulas tried to bring it up again afterward, but by then it only reminded Megatron of his defeat, which made him furious, which caused him to throw the spider through a wall. Nobody brought it up again. If the tyrant had used the plan before Ravage's arrival, however, the Beast Wars could have been won and Megatron's plans put into action.

Depth Charge had reluctantly conceded the point, and Rampage had surprised him by two further examples. They had been working on the main computer, the heavy paneling between them. As a barrier, it was pathetic, but that was a subtle sign of their wary alliance. Depth Charge still kept a cautious optic on the crab, but their attention was on the vital computer parts being assembled. The raybot's upper torso was completely inside the wall, and the Predacon sat leaning against a gutted work station as he fed his captor/partner the next linkup.

"Megatron wasn't the only one who couldn't see what was right in front of his face," the crab had said casually, hands full of wires and circuit boards as Depth Charge slowly reworked them back into the main computer. "Did anyone ever tell you about the alien device that made--no, try the red one. Red. No, the red! Don't mess this one up, the reds are power transmitters--Airazor and Tigatron disappear?"

"The red wire's dead," the raybot complained, voice slightly muffled. Then, "No…wait, no, was that the plant-bomb thing? Cheetor mentioned something about Megatron trying to go back to Cybertron in a giant plant that blew up. Was that--it's working again, but the yellow one's out--it?"

Ah, the delightful rush of grief at the mention of Cheetor's name. What a shame that the grief was becoming dulled with time. It always did. The cat was dead; the living moved on. It probably helped that this Maximal had experience working over grief. Rampage sorted through his handful for the yellow wire. "Hold on, it's bent around the orange. Okay, try it."

"…the red's out again. So?"

"Slag. It might be the circuit board…that sounds about right," he continued, thick fingers moving with astonishing delicacy through the streaks of color across his palms. "So, Tarantulas hated those aliens. I never cared one way or another about them, but every time anyone brought them up, he'd be silently sputtering with hate, oh-ho, such hatred." He chortled and tugged on a thick, dark red cord experimentally. It disappeared into the tangle, and he couldn't see what it led in or out of. "He seemed so calm, but I could feel how he seethed. If he had been--try it again--as calm as he tried to appear, he would have never left such a gaping hole in his plans."

Depth Charge's legs jerked as something shocked him. "Now they're BOTH dead," he yelped in a high-pitched voice, "and the computer's live! Shut it off!"

Rampage blinked for a moment at the dark red cord and sighed. Reds were power transmitters. Right. Main power cord for the central computer. He berated himself mentally even as he backtracked the thick wire and reconnected it correctly; he should have known better than to pull on a red wire without knowing where it led. Auxiliary consoles were online, keeping life support functions powered while the two 'bots worked, but by now, they'd had to splice wires in so many places that most power cords served at least two separate consoles. This one was a bristle of metal ends, six of which were carefully bent away from the power feed to keep the central computer off. Two of them had been brought back into contact by his tugging, and Depth Charge muttered a fervent "Thanks" as he flicked them away again.

The Predacon eyed the power feed and scowled. If he had continued pulling on the cord, he would have disconnected the auxiliaries. He didn't like making mistakes, but things like this were becoming more common for both 'bots. They'd decided on half-rations of energon to stretch out the ship supplies, and their tired reactions were beginning to tell against them…

"Huh. Red's live, yellow's live. Next?" One magenta optic came into view inside the hole, along with an open hand. "And what holes are you talking about? The rusted thing blew up, didn't it?"

Not so trusting, then, and Rampage concealed a smirk as he handed the next twist of wires and circuit board over under the raybot's watchful gaze. The Maximal wasn't as naïve as many of his brethren. The panel between them was a pathetic barrier, a gesture not of the ray letting down his guard, but of a growing belief in the crab's intelligence. A symbol that they were both smart enough to know that they needed each other alive. Interesting. "Start with the blue wires. If Tarantulas had been thinking straight, he would have seen right away that Megatron would betray him the moment that idiotic saurian gained control of the device. Would that blasted spider really have blown up something so--gently, Fins, that one's stripped--powerful if it wasn't a last resort?"

Apparently no one had liked Tarantulas. All Depth Charge had ever known or cared about the spider was a manic chuckling and some nasty venom surprises, but he'd heard Blackarachnia talk once about his inventions. She'd almost sounded…wistful. He wondered absently what she'd felt when the Maximals had finally killed her creator. "Why's it stripped? No, that doesn't sound like him. Megatron betrayed him?" He snorted and slotted the blue wires into their correct sections. "Doesn't surprise me. The main viewscreen should work, now."

Rampage swept the room with a look. "No, but the console screens all lit up." He poked the bundle of blue wires curiously and traced a series of paler blues back though the tangle in his hands. "It shouldn't have surprised Tarantulas, either. If he hadn't been so blinded by his hatred of the aliens, he would have planned ahead for--ah, that would be why. Somewhere on the stripped area should be a cross-section with a pale blue connector. Do you see it?"

"Yeah. I don't remember putting that in."

"I did. We don't have power to waste running the main viewscreen, so I switched everything to the console screens. Speaking of which…hmm." Despite the bands of wiring lying over his lap, the Predacon shifted one handful of colors to the floor and heaved to his knees. That allowed him to reach across the panel--

Depth Charge's internal computer beeped and warned him of the crab's movement. The raybot's fingers froze on the exposed wiring--

and flip a switch on the computer facing. The consoles went dead. "We don't need those on right now." Rampage settled back down against his backrest, rearranging the ropes of wiring until he was buried among them again. He was perfectly aware that one magenta optic peered at him suspiciously from the dark hole in the computer's base, but he seemed absorbed in sorting out the correct order for the rewiring. With computer guts looped over his beast mode's legs to keep them categorized, he looked like a mad scientist, or maybe a psychotic technician.

The optic dimmed to a bloodier color, then rose out of sight as Depth Charge straightened and faced the section he was working on. An illusion, crafted to shift the image of a murderer out of the raybot's focus. Or was it? Was this just another side of the Protoform that no one had ever had the chance to see before? "The green wire's dead."

"Is it connected to the circuit board?"

"Which one?"

"Baseboard's blue, with green and white chips."

He checked. "Not the silver one?"

"Uh…it should be slotted next to that one. There's an output lead with a dark green wire already attached, but you'll have to splice that one onto the same lead. The silver one's for the missile magazine, and there shouldn't be any wires attached to it."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't have a missile magazine anymore." Rampage felt the abrupt tautness on the green wire and jiggled more loose on his end to feed to the raybot. From the bloom of anger coming from inside the computer, Depth Charge must be thinking about the missing chunk of hull and bulkhead the Center's automatic systems had sheared off of the _Cutting Edge_ as it fled into a Transwarp jump. It tempted him to bait the raybot, but he countered the urge with the thought of a weapon powerful enough to vaporize a missile magazine instead of detonating it. They were luckier than they seemed to have escaped with this much of a ship intact. What was a research center, however illegal, doing with that kind of firepower? He might not have been the most frightening thing on that moon, after all. It was a sobering, if intriguing, thought.

"Slagging--ow!--space-hopping rust-bucket…"

That brought him back to the reality of here-and-now. "Green wire's live?"

"NOW it is." Depth Charge shook his zapped hand and muttered to himself. "Alright, what's next?"

"Yellow to green output leads, except for the spliced one. That goes to the blue lead on the main switchboard. You know, they blinded themselves." Yellow wires slid through his hands, and he sorted through the coils for the next circuit board in the series.

Optics bright in the dim interior of the computer, the raybot wished they had power to spare for a detachable light. Even with the emergency internal lights, he had difficulty keeping the colors straight. "Who? I need more," he said with a pull on the wire in question. "It's not going to stretch enough to get to the switchboard."

A frustrated noise answered him. "How much more? Tarantulas and Megatron."

"It cost them." They'd been doing this for too long to bother with exact measurements. He used his hand, thumb to the end of his third finger. "Two lengths."

Rampage translated that into the size of his own hand and compared. "Improvise. There isn't any to spare. It cost you, as well."

Magenta gleamed out from the computer, instantly cautious. "What are you talking about? I could jump the current if there's a length of extra wire, but it'll have to go outside the facing."

"So we'll watch for it when we put the panel back on. Hold on…" He bent over the sparse components left to one side, their dwindling supply of extras torn out of doors and entertainment centers throughout the ship. "The closest I have is half a length," emerald optics narrowed, the mind behind them calculating, "but if you reroute through the silver circuit board, it should work. Your hate blinds you, Fish Face. I've told you that before."

His hand grabbed the proffered wire with more force than strictly necessary, and the Maximal straightened back to his work, twisting the ends into the silver board. "At least we'll get some use out of it, anyway. You're talking slag. You've said that hatred is strength, but--it worked, but now the other yellows are dead--never that hate blinds."

"Try switching ends. Maybe it's corroded." Rampage judged the ripples of rising anger coming from the raybot and decided to keep talking. The slow rage was different than the previous sparks of anger that came and went. This was something that would provoke him, too. "Hatred IS strength, but strength isn't everything. You let your hate blind you from the obvious." Oh, the anger. The fishy didn't like being examined, his weaknesses probed, but it was Rampage's specialty even as it swirled him into matching anger. His grip tightened on the wires. He saw it happening, and consciously relaxed. "You only started to see ME recently. How many clues were there that I wasn't out to get you? How many files about me did you dig up on Omicron? About the Protoform X Project? Yet you didn't put it all together until you had to put your hatred aside to survive and work toward vengeance." He coughed politely, mocking, "I apologize; 'justice,' is it not?"

His hands were still on the circuit boards. His voice sounded harsh, bouncing back from the shell of the computer, "What's your point, Rampage?" Not 'X,' not his first instinct. Rampage. Little things that helped them work together, kept them from each others' throats because there was something more important they had to finish first. The goal was the end of the Center, the end of the Maximal High Council, and he was beginning to understand what the crab was getting at. He didn't want to, but then, he never did.

The ripples were faster, but under tighter control. The Maximal obviously was aware that his anger should be self-directed, not turned on the revealer. "My point is that you're letting your hatred blind you, first with me and now with this. It destroyed Megatron and Tarantulas, and we barely escaped your failure on my part. You didn't see how far the High Council would go to keep me until it was nearly too late. Are you sure that you haven't overlooked anything else?" He toyed idly with a broken circuit board, riding the emotional waves down to relative calm with the ease of experience. Same game, same players, just at a different level. "Let hatred give you strength, Fins, but open your optics before you try to use it."

There was a long silence, and Rampage waited through it, knowing the raybot was thinking. He knew that the Maximal would understand. Already the anger was becoming more subdued, and he knew the power of repressed anger. It suited him that Depth Charge be filled with it, as long as he knew the risks of limited vision caused by it. They couldn't afford to have the artificial margins caused by hatred right now, but the hatred itself...

Other 'bots spouted advice about hatred and goals, touting that they were anathema, but he knew that on the coldest side of life it was often the only way. Seeking vengeance on something like the High Council was like reaching for the stars. His old friend had to hate intensely enough to not care how many people lay in the pile he climbed to the top of, using them as a means to the end, and when that end was close enough to touch, he had to see clearly enough to know that grasping it would leave him with nothing but a molten hand. In the meantime, Rampage would climb beside him, prisoner and ally, perhaps even guide…with a set of solar panels, to gain something of his own in process. Only time would tell if it would be enough to power his plans.

The raybot's legs moved, turning him slightly inside the computer. "The yellows are live. Where's this pink one go?"

He laughed silently at his own thoughts. Such a poetic way of disguising brutal reality. "Splice it into one of the reds."

* * *

"Here we go."

With those simple words, the broken hulk drifting helplessly in space drifted no more. Small jets fore and aft lit, flaring blue and white in the darkness like sputtering stars that fitfully eased the starship _Cutting Edge_ into a preprogrammed position. In the bridge, the 'bot sitting in the captain's chair had relocated it to a work station sprawling with additional screens and keypads, doing the work of a navigator and engineer as well as running the numbers through the computer. Right now he frowned at the sums. "You overshot. Correct 3.45 degrees."

"Stabilizers #2, 5,12, and 14 are either out of fuel or jammed in their ports. I'm compensating." Red fingers ran over the jury-rigged console with deceptive proficiency. Only two and a half weeks ago, they would have been lost on anything but the most obvious of the buttons, and completely hopeless in the rewired mess this board had been turned into. "Lost #15, but that should be the right heading."

Depth Charge checked and nodded absently, optics locked on what the computer was telling him. Considering how much damage it had taken, he wondered if he should bother consulting it at all. "Keep us right there. Initiating engine start-up on three from my mark…Mark one." He felt the presence of the spark-box in his subspace compartment, and the raybot glanced across the bridge in a gesture more automatic than needed. At this moment of truth, the crab was practically trapped inside the still-frame explosion of wires, paneling, and cables that made up his station, bent intently over the screen reporting their status. If Rampage was going to attack right now, he'd trip and fall flat on his face.

He repressed a bark of laughter at the image and managed, "Two," in an admirably controlled voice. He blamed the flash of silliness on the short rations of energon. There was really nothing funny in the current situation. Really. "Three."

Hands of red and silver moved as one, the Predacon preparing for course compensation needed when the main engines kicked online under the Maximal's command. The giant rockets on the back of the ship should have lighted as Depth Charge directed them to, a contained ignition blast that should have rocked them but immediately dimmed down to ready-status. They were prepared for that. Considering their luck so far, they should have predicted that it wouldn't happen. Instead, the ship shuddered, and a deep grinding noise chunked from somewhere inside right before everything began to shake.

"TELL me you know what that is!" Rampage shouted, struggling to keep the ship steady as more stabilizers burned out. The grinding changed pitch to a rapidly-climbing series of clanks and screeches. Wide green optics looked up to see the silver-blue 'bot slam his hand down on the already-battered control console.

The sounds cut off abruptly. The shaking stopped. Depth Charge collapsed in his seat, cradling his head in his hands and whispering something to himself. It sounded faintly like a litany of curses, or perhaps a prayer.

The crab stared at him, part of him focused on monitoring the ship but the rest marveling at the blistering mix of hysteria and hopelessness rolling off his playmate. "What was that?" he asked, voice low in the renewed silence of the bridge. He wasn't good at 'soothing,' but he gave it a try. Right now the Maximal was a nudge away from snapping, and while the sadistic side of him was ready to match anything the ray would throw at him, he knew better. This was neither the time, nor the place. "Fins?"

Drained. He felt so drained. The weariness had been building as he worked, cutting back on rations as they ran short of time and energon, but he'd lost everything he had left. Computers he could repair. This? "That sound," he said dully, "was the sound of a power cell refusing to charge." His hands dropped, and tired almond optics met Rampage's confused emeralds. "One or more of the cells is dead, and the Transwarp drive won't operate without a full charge. Turn the stabilizers off. We're not going anywhere." He hung his head down, elbows on knees and hands limp, and beneath the despair was the thought that the conserved power would keep the life-support systems online longer. For what purpose, he wasn't sure anymore.

Ready lights flickered downward until they stalled out on the screen. Rampage brought the last of the stabilizer jets offline with a deliberate slowness, and the _Cutting Edge_ barely swayed out of the course heading. It was a satisfying thing to accomplish, and he was proud of the steady numbers on the computer. They'd stay relatively still until a solar wind inevitably swept them away again; not bad for someone who had no experience piloting, even with such a minor maneuver. Unfortunately, more important matters were at hand. He freed himself from the mutated console, its work area expanded to include all the functions that had previously been attended by separate people. Keeping his footsteps deliberately loud and sure, he approached the slumped figure of his enemy-ally.

It disturbed him that the raybot didn't even look up. If he attacked right now, he could--no. Appearances were deceiving. Numb resignation could easily snap into berserker fury with this Maximal. Rampage leaned over one of the ray's viewscreens, accessing the engine stats with one optic always trained on the 'bot seated so temptingly near. "This says that all the cells are functional," he said after reading through the screen.

Depth Charge nodded without raising his head. "There's an error somewhere in the computer. I'd bet this chair that if you ran a test, it'd insist the engine's fully powered."

"I don't understand." He turned and propped his hip against the side of the screen, crossing his arms as he faced the Maximal. "We weren't trying to bring the Transwarp drive online yet. If the engine runs off of the fuel rods, and the fuel rods run off processed energon, what happened? We have enough energon for this!" Their supply was low, but not that low. From what he'd seen of the engine plans, everything should have worked, but he hadn't been the one working on that area of repairs. That hadn't been something covered by the manuals the raybot had given him to learn.

"Yeah, we do." Depth Charge finally looked up, face pained. "But with a dead Transwarp cell, none of that energon matters. This is a long-distance starship, not an in-system ship; the jets are secondary, meant for minor usage between Transwarp jumps. All the energon is directed through the cells to bring them up to full power first because the drive is the main propulsion system. After that, it goes to the fuel rods. A dead cell interrupts the flow line, and the computer automatically shuts down the engine before the fuel rods short out." One silver hand waved vaguely at the engine stats. "Except that the computer's busted, and it let us try to start the engine without adequate power. That sound? That was the engine attempting to operate with emergency power only. The dead cell didn't charge, the fuel rods were blocked, and the entire engine seized up. At the very least, the power cells were just flooded with a backwash of reactive energon spit out of the fuel rods. At worst, the cells are flooded, the engine's trashed, and the Transwarp drive blew out. Either way, we can't make a Transwarp jump. Without that, we're stuck here."

Rampage's optics were wide, his manibles slack with shock. "…oh." He hadn't expected such a…bleak explanation.

A humorless chuckle came in agreement with the crab's surprise, and the raybot nodded once before letting his head sag forward again. "Oh."

Green flashed in a blink, changing shock to consideration. "Wait a nano--okay, so the Transwarp jump is out. If the engine's fixable, I could still aim us toward a trade route, and we set the jets for a slow burn. You said someone would look for the ship's beacon if it's activated, and all we have to do is go into stasis while the ship--"

"Won't work." The interruption was quiet and exhausted. "Weren't you listening? The dead cell stops power flow to the engines. We can't activate the jets without bypassing the power cells and cutting the Transwarp drive out of the propulsion system to make the jets primary in the lines."

"Then why can't you--"

"Because the cells have to be bypassed manually to take the Transwarp drive out of the system. It's something that's supposed to be done in a shipyard, not by two 'bots stranded in the middle of nowhere!" The brief spark of anger in his words faded, and Depth Charge sighed. "Look, IF the engine is salvageable, and IF I could bypass the cells, there wouldn't be enough energy left over to get us close enough to a trade route to be spotted and picked up. Even then, if there's a warrant out on us, we'd probably be caught in the transfer to passage on another ship."

The crab shrugged. "So we aim for an occupied planet and get a working cell there," he said impatiently. "All we need is one Transwarp jump to get to Rarmet, right? Planetary security should wake us out of stasis, and if we're quick, they won't have time to fill the warrant before we grab a cell and make the jump. We've done things with this ship that probably shouldn't be possible in or out of a shipyard, so why is this impossible?"

Slowly, the Maximal's head rose as he thought that over. A planet? There was the risk of running through a star or asteroid belt, but that depended if the Astrology section could give them an accurate heading. Rampage had been feeding it information, but that had been for a Transwarp jump. If they could find a planet close enough…no. "It might work, but that's beside the point."

Rampage tapped his fingers against his upper arms. "The point being..?"

"I can't get to the power cells without venting them." Depth Charge looked up at the Predacon and shook his head. "Right now, they're flooded with fuel backwash, and if I flush that out into space, there won't be anything to restart the engine with. There has to be something keeping the engine working while the fresh processed energon is brought into the lines, entered into the fuel rods, and mixed with reactives. That's not something I can do manually. The additives are toxic, and the engine won't run off pure energon if I tried injecting that. It has to go through the fuel rods, but the fuel rods are blocked because of the dead power cell. Until the cells are taken out, there's no way to get more energon into the fuel rods, and I can't take the cells out unless we vent the backwash sitting in them."

And then the engine wouldn't start. "Blast." He turned away from the raybot and studied the engine stats again. Everything LOOKED like it should work, but he knew that was wrong. He sent a query into the computer for a schematic of the engine. He still didn't quite understand what the raybot was talking about. "Is there some way of shunting the backwash off somewhere until you need it?"

"No. The fuel rods are the only things designed to safely contain the stuff." He didn't want to keep fighting a hopeless situation, but the crab's continuing questions prodded him into tired thought once more. "They closed as soon as the engine seized up, and there's no way to open the locks without powering up the propulsion system."

"Why?"

"The mix is highly reactive. The rods feed it directly into the engine, and the engine burns it completely. If someone accidentally opened the fuel rods up, it could be deadly."

"'Could be'?" Rampage gave him a sharp look, switching between the engine plan and the aqua-silver 'bot. "Exactly how dangerous is it?"

Limp hands barely twitched in a listless shrug. "The energon is stable, but the additives aren't. Everything in the engine system is pressurized, but the fuel rods and power cells are kept at a minimum of six times the actual engine pressure. If the mix is allowed to expand without burning off, it reacts and emits a gaseous form that corrodes most metals. The engine and power cells would be fine, but Cybertronians aren't commonly made from starship alloys. A few minute's exposure would eat through and kill a 'bot."

"So it's like a strong acid?"

"I suppose you could think of it that wa--wh--by the Pit!" He whipped upright so fast his chair went over backwards. He didn't seem to care that it sent him sprawling on the floor. His oblong optics were almost round with pure revelation, the shock audible in his stuttered gasp as he gaped.

Standing above him, the Predacon shifted his weight uncomfortably and swallowed. Hard. "You'd better check if the engine is repairable," he rumbled, voice sinking as his mind looked forward to what he needed to do. He did NOT like pain. What made it worse was that he'd suffered this pain before. Anticipation added to agony for those who could feel fear, but reserved for him was the torture of memory. He knew exactly what was going to happen. "And…you'll have to tell me what to do."

Depth Charge jerked a nod, too stunned to say anything.

Looking down at the ray, he mused that it was too bad, really, that he had to ruin that lovely despair by reintroducing hope.


	8. Part 6

**Part Six**

The door cycled. Hastily rewired to open and shut correctly where the controls had previously been pirated away, it finally released when the pressure had equalized. The 'bot inside didn't walk out.

He fell.

Ingrained suspicion and caution vanished in an instant, and Depth Charge caught him. Protoform X he may be, but at this moment there was nothing to fear in the shivering wreck of a robot. Fingers disintegrated down to basic structures clutched at his arms as the raybot carried his load toward a stasis pod, and he had to stop and retrieve a softened crab claw when it dropped off. Frosted green optics, obviously too corroded to see anything, stared blindly in his general direction; ugly gurgles came from the dissolving voice box visible in the slagged throat, and he was relieved when his burden slipped offline. Gas hissed out of joints and melted holes in metal barely discernable as red or purple, and even as it dissipated into the ship's air, it scoured the Maximal. He grunted in pain as his beast mode succumbed first, bubbling on contact, and when he laid Rampage out in the pod, stains of liquefied silver and blue from his arms dripped brightly against the crab's body.

"Primus," he whispered, awed and sickened as he took in the sight of a 'bot who shouldn't be alive. Patches of new, shiny metal were growing across the decayed form, freezing the melted metal and reversing the corrosion. He knew that the immortal spark in Rampage's chest healed him incredibly fast, but this was frightening. He had the feeling that if not for the split spark core and lack of energon, the crab would still be awake. In a way, then, it was something of a mercy that Rampage wasn't awake to feel the damage.

But it reminded him of the danger. "Sleep well," Depth Charge muttered, bending down to cuff his enemy-ally's hands securely behind his back to the base of the stasis pod. The pod should keep the crab offline, but that immortal spark might cause problems, and he knew what might happen if this 'bot woke first. Just because he'd worked with him didn't mean he trusted Rampage. He closed the lid, making sure the seals worked before striding toward the bridge. He passed another pod further down the hall, waiting for him. It had been meant for a member of the _Cutting Edge_'s crew in case of emergency, which was what this was. It was supposed to keep a 'bot safe if he had to abandon ship, but it would conserve energy by putting him stasis lock until the alarm he'd set up earlier alerted him to the ship's approach to the planet they'd selected.

Teartorn was a fairly unimportant planet, but it fulfilled two requirements: it was close, and it had a major spaceport in orbit. It was also one of the few planets Rampage was absolutely certain of the coordinates, which was important considering that they'd be relying on the computer to guide the starship while they lay in stasis. He'd already checked and double-checked the guidance system, locking in the course and hoping desperately that nothing malfunctioned. Now he used the central computer to key into the engine. The mechanism was different than the stats on the screen showed, a few things rearranged and as fixed as his meager engineering skills could repair, and he prayed to any and all the gods who'd ignored his fellow Maximals' pleas that this would WORK. For all the pain and grief to produce a result…

The ship shuddered. The raybot stared at the screen, willing the jets to ignite. He couldn't endure another let-down. He couldn't do it. Something ground shrilly, deep in the ship's hull. He sat rigid, brittle in a way he'd never admit. Metal buckled, screamed, clanked…caught, and gradually smoothed into the steady, vibrating thrum of a starship. The engine light went from stand-by to ready on the screen. Beside it, the coordinates of the planet flicked through the system, and a computer query typed across the screen: 'Initiate jets?'

Alone on the bridge, his head bowed with the barest whisper. "Thank you."

He didn't say who he was grateful to. Not out loud, and maybe not even to himself.

* * *

"…the lack of evidence suggests that the two Maximals are lying low, perhaps waiting for the common bounty hunter to forget about the reward. Acting on this idea, I have had my agents concentrate their efforts on reminding those that frequent the primary subject's ideal hang-outs of the wanted notice. While this has no produced results as of yet, the primary subject's profile shows no previous tendency toward long periods of isolation. Eventually, the rat will surface, and his hiding places should be infiltrated by his own kind greedy to betray him. The possibility of the ex-security officer influencing him will be taken into consideration if the subjects do not surface soon, however, their profiles do not…"

_Admiral Jirex read the latest report from his field operatives and frowned. It made no sense, no sense at all. After nearly four weeks of silence, the three escapees from the A.L.H. Research Center should have been retrieved, or at least spotted. Instead, they had disappeared without a trace. While it was possible to trace a Transwarp drive, the general confusion of ships and equipment at the moment of escape had created an effective shield preventing anyone from tracking the starship. It had been a well-planned maneuver. He could almost admire it. _

Unfortunately, there was the matter of his neck being on the line…

The frown pulled his face into a terrible snarl. The Maximal High Council wanted the Protoform Project accelerated, but the only reliable method would be to recapture X. Dr. Kilju's progress was slow. Threats of replacement were beginning to be dropped, subtle and not, and he knew that 'replacement' was a pseudonym for termination when the Tripedicus Council was involved. There were members of the Predacon Secret Police on his staff, no matter how carefully he'd screened his personnel. While Kilju wasn't concerned, he wasn't so apathetic. This position was his prize, and he wouldn't give it or his life up because of a temporary delay.

That's all the escapees and lack of progress were: temporary. Kilju had assured him that he was close to a break-through. The escapees had to show up somewhere, and his operatives had the most likely areas staked out. Damage to the starship could account for the time lapse, but it was too much to hope for that they'd never made it out of the Transwarp jump. No, the unlikely trio would turn up: prisoner, guard, and guide. He didn't know what they thought they could accomplish by fleeing from the moon, but Rattrap would run his traitorous raybot friend straight into a trap, and both would go to their deaths. X would be subdued and returned to the experiments. Kilju and Jirex would remain high in the regard of the Cybertronian Alliance.

Everyone would be where they belonged, in due time. He would simply have to make sure the Council understood that. Report set aside, he leaned back in his chair and contemplated the future. He could be patient. The rewards would be worth the threats, the political shuffling and attempts at intimidation. Power, recognition by the right people, the silent applause of an exemplary covert job--it would all be his. And best of all, or perhaps he savored the idea more because of the visible confirmation of his tight control, X would be under his thumb, humbled and broken for every misdeed and sneering word directed at the 'bot who'd risen to Admiral. And this time, THIS TIME, X would not escape. He smiled, optics distant.

All in due time.

* * *

The restraints creaked, and something in his wrist snapped.

He relaxed immediately, deciding that it wasn't worth testing further. Flexing his hand popped the cable back into place, and except for a brief spasm of pain, he didn't spend time thinking about the injury. The cuffs were tight but tolerable. He hated being restrained, hated being confined into a stasis pod even more. There were bad memories associated with the thick, clear lid in front of his face, the cuffs on his wrists, and the lethargic response of his limbs. The last time he'd been forced into a pod, it had taken six Maximals with shackles and a gun held to his head. An echo of his helpless fury had woken him this time, but he was still himself, even trapped like this. He'd been changed, the previous time.

Before, there had been the long process devolving him into a silvery, formless pool of metal waiting for the onboard pod computer to reshape him against his will--if there was anything in the place he was supposed to be exiled in to reshape him into the image of. He'd been fully conscious for that. He hadn't wanted to be, and he remembered the creeping horror of losing feeling in his extremities, the strange sludgy lose seeping up his body as he realized that he could see his own body liquefying around him. The odd nausea of watching his internal systems melt into a component soup returned to him now, and he leaned his face against the cool cover as he shook it off. It…hadn't been pleasant. No matter how hard he'd struggled, he hadn't been able to stop the slow dissolving of his own body, and it hadn't been until the very end that his spark had finally allowed his mind to seek the refuge of sleep.

Because sleep it had been. He distinctly remembered waking several times, sloshing fitfully without any control whatsoever, no limbs, no sight, no hearing, and nothing familiar but the pulsing of his spark. He'd dreamed that it had all been one long experiment, supervised by scientists taking samples of his silvery essence while he was helpless. It wasn't until the stasis pod had crash-landed on Earth that he could make sense of anything, but the shock of landing among unstable energon threw him back into dreams. It had taken an energon storm to wake him up completely.

Hmm. He'd have to ask the Maximal if that was how it was supposed to happen. Most protoforms didn't remember their time in the pods, did they? Often they retained their basic superstructure, not pooling, ready for reshaping, but the minds stayed offline, didn't they? He hadn't bothered asking any, but it was…nice…that he could actually ask these questions of someone. Strange, though, that he'd kept his mind intact. None of the other pod-born 'bots in the Beast Wars had remembered their pasts, but he couldn't forget. Did that mean that someone had programmed his pod to preserve his mind? Or had his spark simply refused to allow him to disappear?

Maybe he wouldn't ask Depth Charge, after all. This might be something he'd didn't want the raybot thinking about.

Speaking of his old playmate…

If he turned his head slightly, he could see a dark form sealed in a stasis pod down the hall. So he'd woken early, had he? Oh-ho, what fun he could have if he freed himself--but, no. No, this Maximal had a part in his plan, and distasteful as it was, he should stay in this pod. In fact, it would be best if he could slip back offline. The gleeful rage always waiting under the surface was far too near to winning free, pain having drawn him close to a loss of control. The ache started in his joints warned of energon deprivation, his body having burned the meager ration he'd given it before going into the engine compartment. It reminded him of the Center's experiment, and he wondered if he'd be sensitive to energy loss forever, now. Better to just let the tired lack lull him offline. The need to destroy would subside into violent dreams if he could just sleep again.

He took one last look at the offline raybot before he settled back, drawing his beast mode's legs close about himself. The pod was smaller than he liked, but some obscure crab instinct found security in tight spaces. His fingers curled and played idly over the restraints on his wrists, and he began to laugh softly. Clever manta ray thought he was safe with the monster cuffed down, but he'd chosen a combination lock. Rampage had just spent weeks working through computer codes. What was a combination lock but a code in a specific pattern? It wasn't like he didn't have the time to crack the code.

Reflected in the concave clear lid, twin emeralds bright with private amusement dimmed once more into sleep, and red hands relaxed. It was enough to know that the restraints were there by his choice.

It was a far more pleasant memory to associate with stasis pods.

* * *

_Tell Lady Dementia what you think at Prodding her with a spork sometimes helps her write faster, too._

Go to Part Eight -->


	9. Part 7

_I've actually had this part for a while. I just, um, had zilch motivation to put it up sooner, sorry._

* * *

**Part Seven**

The corridors were pitch black with the darkness of space. Only the most necessary of the starship's systems remained online, and even the emergency lights that normally would have glowed at corners and doors had been turned off to conserve power. The air's gas mix was heavy in oxygen for a Cybertronian ship, but the beast modes it had originally been enriched for would have gasped at its thinness. The other robots from Earth were gone, however, and the ship's recycling plant had been dialed back to operate at the minimum level to support a crew of two. The far-off hum of the engine vibrated, more felt than heard due to the lack of air, through the metal walls and flooring. There was something broken in the thrum, a suggestion of a hitch where the engines had been mended and held together with make-shift welds and desperation. That slight stutter was the only indication of movement on the ship, a hulk sleeping peacefully as jets pushed it slowly toward a planet still far away.

On board, two lights were awake. Two read-outs crawled blue status reports, reflected over and over again down a double row of clear glassy surfaces until the stasis pod containment area held a faint glow of gray against the black of the ship. It was enough to pick out highlights on the two robots upright in their pods, offline and waiting for rescue. It made them look ancient, like they had been waiting for years.

Reflected from metal surfaces down the corridor came a brighter light as a viewscreen woke suddenly, power surging into unused sensor systems that tracked an unknown object coming toward the _Cutting Edge_. The bridge took on a dim gray cast, the tangled wires and savaged consoles a confusing mass. The lobotomized computer ticked through a series of queries to the sensors about collision vectors and possible identification of the object. It considered rerouting power to bring the few working cannons to bear. If the object was a chunk of rock or ice, then that might suffice. Had the computer not been so damaged, it would have run an analysis on the fuel available and chosen an evasive maneuver instead despite the fuel burn. It would cost less fuel to enact a gradual course change than activate one of the cannons.

Unfortunately, the computer had lost too much of its original programming. Queries answered to mechanical satisfaction, the engines changed pitch to roll the starship enough to get a clear shot, and the threatening chunk of ice and rock vanished in a laser flare. Minutes later, the hull pinged as the remains hit in a miniature shower that pitted already battered alloy. The weapon that had fired took a hit to its mounting structure and stuck at an angle, and before the computer could deactivate it, the hatch that was meant to protect it closed, crushing the cannon's barrel. Pinned in place, it registered as open when it shouldn't be. The computer mindlessly ordered the mounting structure to continue trying to withdraw the cannon back into the ship, wasting precious energy.

The threat eliminated, the console screen slept again. The inky black didn't return, however. In the semi-darkness, among the snarled knots of cording, a small gauge had lit. It was a dim light, and getting dimmer as the bright red lights that filled it inexorably burned out. The computer calmly noted its message. Its primary objective had once been to preserve the lives of its crewmembers, but that objective had been lost in the explosion that wiped the mainframe. It had been given a new goal: reach Teartorn. All other functions would be suspended to fulfill this objective. The computer examined its options and began to cut off 'unnecessary' functions. These included the rescue beacon, weaponry…and life support.

The air thinned further. A distinct chill filled it. Inside their glassy pods, two robots limned in faint light faded to indistinct forms, then joined the dark as blue script blinked and slowed, vital power filched away.

The red gauge continued to burn down.

* * *

"_Central…Central…come in Central."_

_This is Clie Central. Your call sign reads as a salvager. Identification, please?_

"_Central, this is salvage scow Garbage Gamine, opt-in' A-Y thirty-forty-one-one out onna skiff run. Ya copy?"_

_#304011, I.D.ed as Garbage Gamine, copy that. What in Wyr's sacred snot are you doing running a filter operation out in Sector A-Y, Bades?_

"_Thought that was you, Taka. How's your brother's spawn brood?"_

_Good enough for him to beg extra hours just to stay away from home. So what's up? Why are you way the Fer back there?_

"_Wanted somethin' easy to do while I shake down the new compactor crew, and skiffin' the space rocks is easy 'n' cheap. Came 'cross somethin' I thought you might wanna check out, though. My scanners are pickin' up a floater over in B-Y."_

_You're kidding._

"_Serious as Fer, Taka. Take a look-see at my scans. She's driftin'."_

_No power? Can you scan for life signs?_

"_Too far out to catch if there's anybody still aboard. Central want me to get closer? That's gonna take me 'nother three rotations, an' the wife'll have my hide if I'm overdue."_

_I'll placate the beast; Central wants a better scan. If there's somebody on that ship, we want I.D._

"_I got first salvage claim, otherwise? Skiffin' space trash don't bring near what a floater'll bring."_

_She's abandoned, she's yours, with Wyr's blessing._

"_I'll get back to ya. Garbage Gamine out."_

"_Clie Central out."_

* * *

Something stirred in the darkness, a muted thump felt only through the metal floor as a pair of cuffs fell to it. The air had long since been pulled back into the recycling plant's storage, and with the power cut, it hadn't been refiltered out again. The sound of the stasis pod opening, therefore, went unheard. Twin emerald optics lit and cast the row of emergency pods into green-tinged gray relief. Lit by their light alone, the face they were set in looked concerned. 

Rampage was cold. By that he knew there was something wrong. The numbness afflicting his beast mode's extremities told him how little air there was, and that, too, was wrong.

His joints shuddered in stiff protest as he forced them to bend, pushing slushy servofluid through his body. Mechanical bodies, while tougher than organics when it came to exposing them to the elements, had their limits. His servofluids were nearly frozen, crystals already forming in internal passages and causing aching throughout his form. His aquatic beast mode had a larger balance of liquids than most Cybertronians, and most of the extra fluid was water. It had frozen enough to expand, and that HURT. Had he truly been in stasis instead of merely sleeping, the hardening of his fluids might have gone unnoticed, and he may never have woken up, forever an icy statue of a killer robot. A quick inspection of the outside of his stasis pod revealed that it had lost power, which at least explained why it had allowed him to cool so much without keeping the inside heated or bringing him automatically out of stasis. The question remained, then, of why the pod had lost power.

He looked up and down the row of pods, but no blue status crawl was visible on any of them. Without that to guide him, he had to move down the row by memory and the faint light of his own optics, thinking all the while. If the other stasis pod was deactivated as well, then either there was a complete loss of power for the entire ship, or the computer had shut down life support. The lack of air indicated it was ship-wide, whatever had happened. Rampage's internal computer couldn't tell time reliably anymore, so he'd have to check the bridge to find out if enough time had passed for the jets to have burned all the energy. It was possible that they'd been asleep that long, but wouldn't they have reached Teartorn before fuel burn-out? But if the computer had shut down life support…

His optics lit familiar features encased under a clear lid, and Rampage studied his unconscious captor. Depth Charge looked surprisingly peaceful in stasis, an expression he wasn't sure he'd ever seen on the manta ray. One massive red hand lifted and gently laid against the pod lid without the usual 'tinktink' as each finger touched down. As he'd expected from the cold around him, the surface was freezing cold under his palm. "So, old friend," he whispered, the sound nonexistent in the airless ship, "you're dying and not by my hand. I wonder, should I give you a merciful death? You need not ever wake. I could let you freeze solid, or perhaps a quick shot to the head...it would be what you expect from me." Regretfully, the Center had taken away his smaller caliber weaponry, leaving him only his missile launcher. It would be messy, but fun. "Your life is at my disposal, my friend, and you don't even know it." He chuckled, then shivered. A brief sparkle of light and energy danced around his chest as his divided spark fought the temperature and melted his fluids. A slight tingle around his air filters indicated that his spark was keeping him from suffocating as well. The freezing pain ebbed a little, but he was well aware of how much energon he'd need to keep that trick up--energon he didn't have. Well, he could tolerate the pain for a while.

The Maximal didn't have his stubborn immortality, however. What was slush in his own body would be close to solid in the raybot's. Depth Charge's systems were upgraded for tight situations and might take more abuse than most Cybertronian's, but even he couldn't survive long in the airless, cold vacuum of space. Without power, the pod wouldn't bring him out of stasis or keep him alive; the ray was too frozen to do it on his own by now. Rampage gave him a searching look, this time picking out the tiny shadows his optics cast on blue-silver metal, tiny shadows that he didn't remember being there previously. Tiny shadows cast by tiny bulges and bumps where expanding ice had forced the metal out. So. It was a fair bet that, being a sea creature as well, the Maximal had close to the same balance of water in him, and that water had frozen. His other fluids wouldn't be far behind, then. The lack of air wasn't as immediate as the freezing temperature, but it would kill, too.

"You haven't long, have you. Hmm."

He drummed his fingers against the stasis pod, staring at the helpless 'bot. It was true that the raybot would expect only death at his hands, even the peaceful death by cold. No one would ever expect Protoform X to stir himself to do anything but kill; it would boggle the scientists who'd made him that he considered saving someone. They probably would have keeled over in shock that this wasn't the first time. Should he try to keep the ray alive, though? His spark hid in one of the Maximal's subspace compartments, but as the Center had taught him intimately, there were ways to get into someone else's subspace pockets. If he waited to open the stasis pod until Depth Charge's spark gave out, it would be an unsatisfactory kill but an assured one. The raybot would die, he'd get his spark back, and it would be such an easy solution to his current dilemma…if he didn't think about the consequences.

"You and I have an agreement, do we not?" he mused, speaking without sound. "You have no idea how few times I have given my word. Could you possibly know its value, or did you only observe the formalities of getting my cooperation, relying on my spark to control me? Strange, my friend, that I would promise my aid and only now when you're unaware of how your, ah, 'trust' has come to be tested, that I would decide whether or not to honor such an oath." Red fingers trailed shadows down the unconscious 'bot he spoke to, the unfelt caress all the more disturbing for its possessiveness. "To let you die so easily would cheat me of my hard work, can't you see? Oh-ho, you are my best work and all the more beautiful for your tragic ignorance. You cannot possibly know how I use you even as you think to use me."

With the tenderness of a born killer, he reached with those senses his immortal spark gave him, and gloried in emotions running stable and calm. He REACHED, and took what he found. Depth Charge slept so deep he couldn't even dream, his mind shut down in stasis, but his spark lived. That spark, that familiar spark that Rampage knew well. From a security chief he'd left for dead with a spark full of fears and hopes, connections and links straggling from and weakening the whole, he had molded this singular ball of scintillating life seared of the unnecessary emotions. Strong, controlled, and independent; unwilling to be bound to others because of the experience of loss that happened over and over again, veteran enough not to panic, and able to hack it on his own. This was a robot that didn't flinch away from a fight. In fact, he'd limped after it in pursuit. He had nothing left to lose but his life, and when he came face-to-face with death, he counted even that as expendable.

Rampage had thought for a while that the Maximals on Earth had softened Depth Charge, but the Center's slaughter had taken care of that. There was a slightly brittle edge to the raybot now, a fear of failure that shrilled on the edges of Rampage's tolerance, but all in all, the Maximal's spark had become more than he'd dared hope for: a clean spark free of the frivolous, changing emotions of everyone else. Stability in the one spark he was practically attuned to among all he came across. He knew it, could predict it, could ride the variations in emotions where his experimental spark was caught up in anyone else's.

This was the result of his labors. The fights, the trail of killings, the taunting that ripped open the Maximal's mind and laid it bare of self-deception and the mask of civilization--all to produce this one, single spark. He could almost thank the Center for throwing them together. Their struggle for survival had given him what he needed to bind himself to the raybot in a way he hadn't been able to before.

Would it work how he hoped? He didn't know yet. It would take exposure to other lifeforms before he could be sure.

In the meantime, he stroked his hand down the stasis pod with possessive pride. The urge to kill was there, but he suppressed it with a control he'd never had. What an odd sensation, this stability, balanced between the sociopath and psychopath. A killer still, but far more normal now than he'd ever been. It would only last until the raybot woke, but still…

IF the raybot woke. "I could bring you online, but if there's no power left, you'd only be awake long enough to die. Leave this to me, Fins." His face twisted in a smile, optics bright. "I need you alive more than you'll ever know." Laughing at the Depth Charge's imagined response to his words, Rampage turned toward the bridge. Oh, he needed the raybot for vengeance on Kilju and Jirex, and that was excuse he would give if the ray lived. He had his own plans, after all, and it wouldn't do for the ray to know them. Did he need him for more than vengeance?

For now, yes. But he knew himself well enough to know that if the Maximal hadn't been offline, he very well might have torn the spark from him, need or no. Next time, Depth Charge might not be so lucky.

The walk was made more treacherous by the dark, but he made it to the bridge. He barely felt his crab legs hit the doorframe, and he scowled. His spark obviously couldn't do much about what the lack of oxygen was doing to his beast mode, but as long as the numbness remained only an annoyance, he'd live with it. Shaking his limp crab legs back with a shrug, Rampage glanced around the dark control center and winced. There were no viewscreens on. That was a bad sign. When he picked his way through the tangled wires to a console to try it, there was no response. Stumbling a bit in the semi-dark his optics caused, he found the main computer and tried to turn it on.

There was a weak beep and a flash of red on a gauge nearby before it dimmed offline again. Rampage immediately bent over the gauge, reading it by the light of his optics. "Ah. That is…problematical." Worried now, he flipped the computer off and on again quickly. The gauge beeped, lit, and went out, but he'd read its message before it was gone. Low power. VERY low power. So low that he wouldn't be able to activate the computer and find out why the power was gone, much less find out where they were. The jets wouldn't be operating, then, much less life support. Depth Charge's chances of survival had just plummeted to near zero, and the risk to Rampage was rising. Freezing was one experiment the scientists hadn't tried on him, and he had no idea if it would eventually kill him or if he'd just drift with the ship until something thawed him.

Light sparkled around his chest, and he shook his head to clear the afterimages of the lightshow from his vision. If his spark kept fighting the cold, he was in for an extended, painful freeze as he starved. Suffocation wasn't a big a problem for his robot form as it was for his beast mode, but eventually it WOULD become a problem, one his spark would expend yet more energy to fight. Wonderful. Energy deprivation was one of the more agonizing things he'd ever gone through, by length if nothing else.

Options? Without power, the ship was dead and blind. His choices were to kill the raybot himself or let him freeze solid. There was nothing else he had control over in this situation. Well, he COULD siphon off the ray's remaining energy for himself, or maybe give the Maximal some of his own, enough for one last fight between them. It would be good to hear the ray scream one last time…

He blinked in dawning realization and began to run his hands along the computer bank. Sentiment was something he had learned, but he wouldn't let it get in the way of his continued survival. Torturing Depth Charge would be a waste of energy. All signs indicated that he'd be alone on this wreck of a starship for quite some time, and if he was going to use his energy for anything, it would be to find out whatever he could about where the ship was. If he could activate a external camera, perhaps a scanner, it could give him an idea of how much longer he'd be stranded. Depending on when the jets had given out and how far the solar winds had swept them off course, the initial push from the engines would eventually get him SOMEWHERE.

* * *

"_Yo, Central. Come in Central."_

_Clie Central here. You are registered as call sign Garbage Gamine, I.D. #304011. Confirm please?_

"_Copy that one, Central. I got those scans ya wanted on the floater."_

_Acknowledged. Hold, please._

"_Gotcha."_

_…Captain Bades, this is Liegetuant Rew. On the behalf of Clie Central, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you and your crew for redirecting your operation to accommodate us. The governor has already signed a reimbursement issue for your time and effort._

"_Well, thank you muchly. Ya want those scans?"_

_If you would._

"_I'm tellin' ya, Liegetuant, this ship looks like she's been through Fer and back. Dunno who built her, but she took that pounding and still kept goin', she's gotta be one tough scrapper."_

_Oh? Why do you think she kept going after taking all that damage?_

"_Been watchin' her for three rotations. She's been onna straight course, with no aft-wobblin' like shipkill's give, ya follow? Ya ask me, she kept goin' 'til her power ran out. Central know her?"_

_She's not registered here, but if she's a dead ship, she could have come from anywhere. We're running a cross check on the galactic shipyards. It's a long shot, but…can you get a clear scan for survivors?_

"_Wyr's toes, Liegetuant! She's outta power! Nothin' left for life support."_

_Not even separate system power?_

"_Uh, gimme a quarter rotation. We'll be close enough for a scan like that, then."_

_We'll have someone on standby, Captain. Clie Central out._

"_Garbage Gamine out."_

* * *

He had to hold onto the console to stay upright. 

The seat tempted him, but he knew that if he sat down, it would only make it worse getting back up again. His head spun already from the abrupt energy drain, and he didn't want to think about what kind of vertigo moving would cause. For all that there was only screen on, there seemed to be an abundance of lights dancing around in Rampage's vision. He forced himself to focus on the one he knew was real, cursing all the while the scientists who had designed him without a download jack. If he'd had one, he wouldn't have needed to power up one of the viewscreens in order to see what the starship's sensor net had caught. The sensor radius, fed by his rapidly-falling energy levels, was receding as fast as he was being drained, but right at the very edge of the wavering circle on the screen there was half a dot. It disappeared and reappeared, frustrating the crab's attempts to identify it. Each attempt cost him more energy as the computer drew on his reserves, trying to discover if the blip on the screen was space debris or spacecraft.

His spark warmed him again suddenly, and he grimaced as the sensors lost power and his knees went weak. His body wanted very badly to go offline from lack of energon; his spark wanted just as badly to keep him online to fight the cold. His mind, on the other hand, wanted to feed the computer enough energy to figure out whether rescue or disaster was about to happen. It was hard to think through the dual pain and nausea assaulting his body, but he thought that whatever it was out there would reach the _Cutting Edge_ in less than a day. If the mystery object missed the ship by some miracle, then there was always the local star to worry about. A minor course extension calculation had revealed that not only did he have no idea what star system he was in--it was either ignorance on his part or the power-crippled scanners, he couldn't tell--but the nearest star's gravity well had latched onto the ship. It would take a while, fighting the original acceleration and the solar winds, but, eventually, the _Cutting Edge_ was going to take a plunge into the fiery ball of gasses. Well, the starship would probably melt long before it reached that point, but the crab wasn't exactly concerned by technicalities at the moment.

He sagged against the console, body shivering as light sparkled around his chest once more. He'd seen enough. He had hope for, at most, a day. With a soundless moan of effort, he severed the connection feeding his energy into the computer and dropped to his knees seeing double. Since the viewscreen went black the second it lost energy and his optics were dim with energon loss, he didn't see a lot. It was still better than not seeing anything at all, which he was infinitely pleased to not suffer again.

The drain itself had felt worse than his low energy level did, and his body started to stabilize almost immediately. His beast mode was an empty, numb weight throughout his form, kept from dying of suffocation only by his robotic nature, and even that was failing, now. With the patience of the condemned, he waited for his vision to return to normal and worried that his spark might reject his beast mode to save his basic structure. The last time he'd starved, his body had failed as a whole. This time, his spark had to expend energon he couldn't afford to use to keep his crab transformation from permanent shut-down, even if that part of him wasn't functional anymore. He really didn't know what his spark would do to keep him from freezing.

It was a strange thing to worry about, perhaps, but Rampage LIKED his beast mode. In his limited experience, there had been nothing like it. It was new, no scientist had designed it, and he hadn't had to try and graft it onto himself. And in a weird way, although he determinedly didn't think about it, it was something he could rely on when he'd exhausted his own experience. His crab form had come with a set of instincts that he, a created experiment, lacked. When worst came to worst, he still had his beast mode.

The subprograms the stasis pod back on Earth had put into him with his beast mode ran just under the surface of his mind. Having come up against something he couldn't fight in the conventional way, he listened to the deeper, simpler thoughts of an animal:

Dig in. Wait. Survive.

Emerald optics flashed in the darkness as he rose from the floor. How easy animals had it, those Earth creatures who could not hope to control anything in their lives. Their world was beyond their comprehension, and they lived and died at its whim. They learned to deal with what they were given. Did intelligence mean that those with it sought to gain control of their lives? Yet in this situation, where he could do so little, he could slip into that way of thinking. Letting things happen instead of trying to direct how they happened was deceptively attractive.

The sparse light of his optics went before him as he dragged his heavy feet back the way he'd come, noting that his feet grew less heavy with each step. The starship's gravity was giving out, finally. That told him that he'd be correct in thinking that the computer had run the jets until the last dregs, sending every scrap of energy to the engines; from Depth Charge's hurried crash course in engine repair, he knew that internal gravity was the first and last to receive energy. It had something to do with how the engine was constructed, but since that part hadn't been what he'd worked on, he didn't know what. He just knew that if the gravity was only failing now, then the computer had still been trying to run the engine until the very last of the power was gone. He still didn't know what had taken up so much of the energon than they hadn't made it to Teartorn. He might not ever find out.

The quest for energon had led Megatron across time and space. Rampage stumbled down the corridor, pulling his way down the row of stasis pods by his hands as his steps grew longer and his feet left the floor more easily. He swayed to a stop in front of one pod in particular and studied the end to his quest. Like Megatron, all that stood between him and the energon he craved was the Maximal who'd followed him. An entertaining, irritating, persistent MAXIMAL. As much as he'd hated Megatron and his forced inclusion into the Predacons, Rampage had found that the faction suited him. Anything out to destroy the Maximals couldn't be that bad, after all. It was the Maximal High Council that had condoned the Protoform X Project, and he'd never gotten over the bitterness he felt toward the faction. That the A.L.H Research Center was a joint operation with the Predacons hadn't bothered him; the Predacons were SUPPOSED to be the 'bad guys.'

Here he was, victim of the 'good guys,' baddest of the 'bad guys,' looking into a pod containing the hero, his enemy, his playmate and prison guard…and a fellow victim. Arguably the worst of the supposedly-good faction, a rebel and a runaway, who'd gone against the wishes of his own government, this 'bot was both his captor and savior. Without Depth Charge, he'd have been left to the tender mercies of Admiral Jirex and Dr. Kilju. Without Depth Charge, he'd still be free. Rampage studied the offline Maximal with a clinical eye, seeing a source of badly-needed energon. His hand reached out and found the lip of the clear pod lid. His spark soaked up the sculpted emotions of the raybot's own spark, and he hesitated.

In that hesitation was the conflict he always felt around this 'bot. To let live for future amusement, for future use as payoff for past work; to kill for present pleasure, for present survival. The beast instincts said to live at another's expense, because that's how the universe was. The rage and hate that were always smoldering in him wanted the Maximal's death, slow and full of delectable fear. The part of him that felt his old friend's spark thought of a day's hope.

A day of waiting for that unknown dot on the sensor net, until he knew if the situation was completely hopeless. A day of pain on his part, the energon loss wringing his systems dry, but Depth Charge wouldn't live that long. Only the fact that he could feel the raybot's struggling spark told him that the Maximal was still alive. He should kill him now and take his energon. Even if he wanted to wait and see if rescue might happen, the raybot wouldn't be alive by then. The logical decision would be to alleviate his pain now instead of waiting until the Maximal died naturally.

But his hand wouldn't tear the stasis pod open. The hesitation stretched out into indecision, and Rampage stared thoughtfully at his ally-victim-captor. A living being who rested, looking so peaceful and trusting, and he knew that he could end that life. It would be fun, and it was necessary. Wasn't it?

The raybot's mind had been laid out before him again and again throughout their long chase, but only recently had the crab exposed his own twisted psyche to the Maximal's scrutiny. He'd used his vulnerable spots as a ploy to bring the hunter off-balance. Unfortunately, using them had only made him more vulnerable. To be believable, he'd allowed himself to succumb to strange emotions, things he hadn't cared enough to bother feeling before, like shame or embarrassment. Along with these emotions came an odd attachment he'd felt only twice before. Both times, it had been spontaneous and so brief he hadn't had to think about how to deal with it. Now he found that this…thing…had grown in him, gradually building to a strength difficult to resist. It was similar to what he'd felt before, but different. It came out of the cracks and crannies of his mind to stay his hand, and he stared at the unconscious Maximal as if he could pry an answer to this newest problem out of the raybot's head.

"How strange," Rampage told him, voice sucked away in the vacuum of space, "that I now see Transmutate in you. Or not," he reconsidered, tilting his head. "I did, after all, feel her spark for the first time in a stasis pod much like this one. Your sparks are much alike, although her strength was the innocence of damage and yours the experience of loss." He shrugged, dismissing the comparison. "It seems that I have all the more reason to call you my friend, now. Hmm. Surprising, but it changes nothing. Unlike some fool Maximal, I won't let sentiment stop me."

Indeed, he wouldn't. It WAS surprising to find that his victim and pursuer had become something more to him during the long days of working side by side on this ship, but recognizing his vulnerable points would allow him to compensate for them. He analyzed the weakness and set it aside, raising his hand to smash the stasis pod open--

--and paused, optics wide.

There.

THERE.

On the edge of his senses, thrilling through his spark like he'd been shot, unmistakable and yet he could hardly believe it. He could feel life, tiny whorls of living emotions that caught at him and prodded the killer toward the limits of control. Emotions dragged at him, pushing and pulling in an inner conflict that made his hands twitch to wrap around those bright sources of life. In the midst of the tangle, his spark sought the familiar security of the raybot's spark.

His head cleared. He shook it, then blinked rounded emerald optics in startled delight. There was life nearby, many living beings. The blip on the viewscreen had been a ship!

Suddenly, the aches in his limbs and the numbness of his beast mode didn't hurt quite so much. They were only temporary, anyway. More important was the reality of rescue, or at least a ship being within reach. His fist dropped to his side again. Half a dozen schemes for forcing his way on board the approaching ship immediately came to mind, but he looked at the Maximal and dismissed them all. It would take close to a day for the ship to reach the _Cutting Edge_, perhaps longer for anyone to come in looking for survivors. Depth Charge had barely an hour left, if that. His interest in extending that time limit had abruptly been rekindled, and with rescue close enough to measure, there was an option or two open. They might not work, but it was worth a try…now. If they worked and the raybot lived, he wouldn't need to kill or threaten his way onto the other ship.

Rampage laughed triumphantly, enjoying the freedom of control. Familiar and stable, the spark held in the stasis pod before him kept him within the bounds of controlled insanity. For the first time in his life, what he felt didn't drag him down into murder. He didn't have to kill. "It worked, Fish Face," he chuckled without sound. "It worked."

* * *

"_Ya there, Central?"_

_This is Clie Central. Call sign Garbage Gamine, I.D. #304011?_

"_The one and only. The Liegetuant there?"_

_Liegetuant Rew has left standing orders for your calls to be put through right away. Please hold while I transfer you._

"_Right…"_

_Captain Bades? What have you to report?_

"_I'm pickin' up one life sign, maybe. Scanners are sayin' it's a mechaniod, but a weird one, at that. Ya want me t' send inna team?"_

_We would appreciate it, Captain Bades. Clie Central still doesn't have an I.D. for the ship, so we'd advise caution. Do you have any sort of status read?_

"_No idea. Could be anythin'. Dead, for all I know. Could just be a residual energy siggy. Mechanoids have all sorta weird status limbos. My scanners are showin' two life signs, but they're insistin' there's only one energy system. I dunno what coulda survived in this wreck, though. She looks even worse from up close."_

_Even bodies would help us identify her. If you would record any energy signatures, we might be able to trace the crew._

"_Ya got it, Leigetuant. Too bad if I lose salvage claim, but I hope t' Wyr we pull somebody alive outta there. Poor rotter musta gone through Fer, an' it'd be a shame not to hear THAT tale!"_

_Yes, although you'll forgive me if my interest is somewhat more practical._

"_Well, that's what we pay ya for. Garbage Gamine out."_

_Clie Central out._

* * *

Space was many things: cold, hot, dark, light, full, empty, quiet, and loud. Here in the ship, it was frozen black silence. 

But in one corridor in particular it wasn't as dark as it had been, and just a little warmer. Blue status crawl tracked slowly across a screen, telling anyone reading it that the interior of the stasis pod was at minimal life support, the temperature extremely low but not freezing, with a tiny amount of recycled air featuring a concentration of oxygen sealed inside. It was enough to keep the robot's fluids slushy and his air filters working. It was barely enough to keep him alive, but alive he was. He nearly hadn't been.

Space was also a measurement. Infinite or small, it could fit between anything or nothing, from planets to mere seconds.

In the space of a moment, Rampage had chosen to save Depth Charge.

Sitting on the floor, anchored by his grip on the bottom edge of the nearest stasis pod, the crab drifted with lightheadedness born of energy drain plus freefall. A thick tube led from his arm to the raybot's pod. He didn't watch energon drip out of himself, however; his green optics were offline, preserving what energy he could. It also helped him concentrate. There was no sound in the vacuum, and his body hurt too much from the lack of energon to feel any vibrations through his hands. That left his spark, and it could feel the approach of five lifeforms. That held his avid attention. Were they hostile? Were they a rescue team? Did they even know someone was here?

Had the Center found him?

Pain and weariness turned his body into a battleground. His mind, as always, waged war on itself. Massive red hands flexed, crushing metal in their grip without even trying. Energon continued to feed into the stasis pod beside him, pink-silver-gold. A spark glowed there, calm and unaware, and he held to its stability with difficulty. Five lifeforms, splitting up. Searching? He didn't know. All he knew is that two of them were heading in this direction. Two lives, so easily ended…spared. Green optics lit dully, and in their light, Rampage smirked.

A decision made between here and there, now and then. The distance shrinking, quiet, cold, and dark.

He waited, suspended in space.

* * *

"_Clie Central? This is Garbage Gamine, #304011. Come in!"_

_Clie Central here--_

"_Leigetuant Rew? We gotta situation out here."_

* * *

--

--

--

--

--

_Plot: (happily going toward Teartorn)_

_Rampage: Yoink! (runs off with plot to Clie)_

_LD: Hey! Get back here! Depth Charge, STOP him!_

_Depth Charge: (disoriented) Wha--? Are we there yet?_

_LD: ...well, you're no help at all._


	10. Part 8

_(For __Yana__, who hasn't given up yet. Thanks. ;) _

* * *

Part Eight

* * *

In the world behind his optics, he drifted in dark, soundless waiting. He registered dimly that he WAS waiting for something and wondered when that had started. He also wondered, without much concern, what it was he was waiting for. He dismissed the questions as unimportant and let himself wait. The darkness pressed into him comfortably, and with that pressure he realized he had form. He was big, larger than his consciousness could touch because his interest faded as quickly as his awareness did. It was enough to know that he had a body around him, even if he couldn't comprehend its shape or function. He drifted, forgetting thoughts as soon as they started, remembering the ends long after he'd lost the beginnings. The body around him was tired and not quite awake, and his mind wasn't much better. 

As if from a distance, whispers of sound reached him, almost inaudible and meaningless in their near-silence. The sounds prodded at him, inspiring his slow thoughts into reaching toward completion. One thought after another nearly finished, only to disappear into the comforting darkness before he could wrap his mind around them and wake to their meaning. A vague feeling started: this wasn't normal for him. He didn't care much that it wasn't, but at least he could hold onto that feeling. It was something of an accomplishment. With it as an anchor, his mind explored more often than it drifted, touching on half-finished ideas and fully-formed reports from the body coming out of stasis that he inhabited. None of it seemed terribly interesting, but with a kind of absent-minded duty, he gradually pulled himself together from the bits floating about in the darkness. He couldn't remember WHY he felt this duty, but it wasn't like he had anything better to do. He had no direction in this world of darkness, just a nagging sense of self formed somewhere between the motionless, numb bulk of his body and the stumbling mass of mechanical responses and spark-deep subconscious thought that was mind.

So, he went toward the whispering. There was nowhere else to go. The rise and fall of soft background noises began to separate like oil and water, the higher and lower tones dissolving out of the whole to become different voices. He couldn't tell how many there were because something connected in his head when he heard one voice, louder and more familiar than he could place. Louder, or perhaps just closer to his body, but why in the Pit did that light a brief flare of alarm in some distant corner of his mind? If there was a synapse firing up in his head, it hadn't turned over completely yet. He noticed that he'd become somewhat frustrated by his lack of control and resolved to do something about that. The fact that he'd managed to care enough to make a resolution surprised him, and the surprise itself was a surprise. He marveled at it for a moment before resuming his exploration.

If the voice was UP, and his body was OUT, then logically somewhere between the two was a way they joined. His body had a method of hearing sound, yes. Audios, they were called. When he concentrated, he could recall that little fact, along with the logic to figure it out. His thoughts were becoming more organized, stuttering slightly before they completed but finishing and slotting neatly into place. Good. Following thoughts to their ends gave him a greater sense of self, of who and what he was. The reports filed in his head integrated as he figured out individual words even as he didn't necessarily understand everything they said, and he realized that they were all about his body. Something was generating the reports; it took him some hesitant probing in other directions, but eventually he followed the data to its source. It allowed him access at a touch, and he tested it, trying to figure out what it was for. Audios, yes, and surface damage, and repair systems were online to deal with it all, automatically brought online long before he'd stopped drifting. An automatic interface between his body and thoughts, then, and he searched through it for something more than this unclear recollection. He designated it an onboard computer of some kind, and it immediately started to bring things to his attention. Primary in this new influx of status reports was a blaring proximity alert. He debated being worried by this, wondering who his computer could be tracking and whether this person had the familiar voice.

Along the way toward what might have been a memory, a few thoughts snapped into place. He paused and tried them out. The numbness of his body receded slowly, but it felt like his limbs were filled with lead weights. One finger twitched, and he analyzed the information brought in by that small movement. It gave him an idea of how he was supposed to use this body he'd found himself in. HIS body, waking a minute at a time and bringing his hazy mind back to himself. Abandoning the automatic systems for the moment, he concentrated on the loud voice. It hadn't gone away while internal radar pinpointed its position, and he still felt alarmed by this. He'd have to come out of his dark internal world to find out why. With innate caution and some trepidation, he mentally flicked a connection into place and came out from behind his optics.

Let there be light…

* * *

Depth Charge was making little noises. Dreamy, comfortable, and lazy noises that he whined in weary protest of the strange world that insisted he rejoin it. They gradually changed into tiny groans of more confusion than protest, but the screen with his stats on it showed that the raybot obviously wasn't over being stubborn about coming out of stasis. Most of his systems apparently needed an external kickstart. As the technician at the prone robot's side slowly reintroduced heat and fresh energon into him, his stats fluxed and climbed with sullen reluctance toward operational levels. Depth Charge mumbled nonsense syllables sleepily, and one finger twitched. 

The technician looked up at the Cybertronian on the other side of the platform the raybot was on. "You are certain this is normal?" she asked in heavily accented Standard. The large robot nodded silently, and she turned back to her equipment again. The team that had initially made contact with the two beings in her care had established that while the conscious robot couldn't understand the planet's native tongue, he at least partially understood the trade language. He hadn't spoken more than a few words to anyone, either from trauma or lack of linguistic skill. He seemed intelligent to her, though, and he made a very unnerving watcher for this procedure, in her opinion. She couldn't very well ask him to leave, not after what he'd gone through to keep this other robot alive. "I'm sorry I keep asking," she said over one shoulder knob, "but I have no experience with your kind's natural functioning."

Rampage barely spared her a glance. She had no weaponry that he could detect, and he could kill her with a single blow to her soft cranial dome. There was nothing here to stop him. There was a guard outside the room, but the alien was meant to be his guide around the station more than an actual threat to keep him in line. The lack of security on this space station utterly amazed him. He could easily destroy the place in an hour, and the urge to do so was there, beating in his split spark. Dark urges made all the more persuasive now that he had a way to escape, a planet and a working space station with starships, ways to find new victims and slip from the Maximal High Council's grasp. His captor was offline, and he could take back what was his and LEAVE…but, no. The Council would follow, Jirex and Kilju snapping at his heels, until he destroyed them.

And he wanted their destruction with a deeper yearning than he'd ever experienced before.

He wanted to crush the alien technician, however, and feel her extinguished life at his fingertips. Had he been alone, the pull of her emotions would have sucked him into a maelstrom of violence and glee that he would have gladly surrendered to--but he wasn't alone. There was another spark, a familiar spark, that held him in a fragile spell of control that he didn't wish to break however much he contradicted himself in imagining the alien's innards spread across the wall. It helped if he didn't look at her.

Instead of looking at her, then, he watched his old friend. It was fascinating. He'd never seen his enemy-made-ally this out of it. In stasis and near death, the ray had been vulnerable, but he hadn't made these tiny noises that seemed to belong to someone like Cheetor. It was like the raybot was being dragged out of stasis by his tail, complaining all the while that he'd been sleeping, slaggit!

It made Rampage smirk and chuckle, and he wistfully regretted not having some way of recording the Maximal's waking. This was perfect blackmail material in the making, if he could've used it right. Or, at least, he could have embarrassed the Pit out of the raybot. Ah, well. He'd just have to use it how he could.

More important than that was the simple fact that Depth Charge was near waking. The raybot's familiar spark drew into itself, the soft vagueness disappearing into the bare, sharp angles of the personality he knew, and Rampage leaned over him curiously. There was no stasis pod lid to stand between them this time, and he found himself morbidly fascinated by watching someone who'd almost died come back to life.

"You made it," he murmured to the inert form, and the technician glanced up. A look of what he was coming to identify as confusion crossed her alien features, but he ignored her. "Imagine my surprise that we've BOTH made it to a planet," he commented wryly, voice barely audible, and after a moment of listening to his words, the female went back to her work. She couldn't understand his words any more than he could understand her planetary language. He didn't know what the language he spoke was called because it was all he'd ever been taught, but he was willing to bet it was specific to Cybertron and its colonies and allies. That would explain why he was ignorant of more than a few words in any other tongue. He hadn't wandered far beyond Cybertron's sphere of influence in his life. That didn't mean he couldn't learn; in the time since the rescue, he'd picked up the basics of what these beings called 'Standard.' Knowledge of a trade language could be useful in the future.

Thoughts of how he could use it were pushed to the back of his mind as the Maximal's optics lit dimly. Chuckling quietly, Rampage looked down at him. "Welcome back, old friend."

He had just enough time to realize his mistake when he saw the lightening-quick movement of Depth Charge's hand, but nothing would ever prepare him for the PAIN. It punched into his chest like a living thing with vicious intent, ripping into his damaged spark as his core smashed flat in the small box Depth Charge now held. Each crystal of raw energon could be clearly felt, a reminder of the agony time and his own mind had blurred, unable to believe that such pain could be endured. He'd scream if he'd the ability, but the rest of his body had faded away as his entire consciousness folded around the mad flutters of his spark. Tortured by itself, it shrieked for him.

* * *

He watched in grim satisfaction as the giant robot crashed to the floor, clutching his chest and obviously no longer a threat. The panic still sang in his servos, giving him nervous energy despite feeling drained, and Depth Charge sat up in defiance of his oppressive weariness. His optics never left the crab's huddled form. The first thing he'd seen had been Rampage's smirking face, causing everything to snap back into place like a completely connection somewhere in the depths of his neural circuitry. His reflexive action had been one changed from only weeks ago, when he would have launched a grenade from his chest. Instead, the spark-box had slid almost naturally into his waiting hand. 

The results, he had to admit, were gratifying. A grenade would have inconvenienced the red-purple 'bot; this had incapacitated him. That was a good thing, since the raybot shook his head as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He wasn't in fighting condition at the moment. When the dizziness passed, he blinked his optics and let up on the spark-box. Rampage immediately moaned in response, the noise sounding torn from his throat. If the painful sound was any indication of what he had just suffered, the crab wasn't about to start anything more.

More?

Depth Charge blinked and shook his head again, trying to force his memory to supply the events leading to waking up with Rampage hovering over him. The problem was that he just didn't remember. Still, even if he didn't know what was going on, it was a fair bet that Rampage had been up to no good.

A high-pitched squeak finally jerked his gaze from his downed foe to the other occupant of the room. A frail biped of some kind with two upper limbs set above a dome-shaped structure he thought was a head squeaked urgently at the door, which hissed open to reveal a blockier version of the species. The Maximal's mind suddenly turned over, analyzing his surroundings with startled alarm. He hadn't had time to look beyond the immediate threat, and he realized that he had no idea where he was. Not only was he not on the ship, but the last thing he remembered was shutting down into stasis. Somewhere between going offline and coming back online he'd been taken off the ship, Rampage had somehow been freed, and they had ended up in this room. It wasn't a place he recognized. The features were foreign, designed for the aliens advancing toward him. They were both wearing harnesses that were probably uniforms, but while the smaller biped's harness held electronic tools, the larger's had a holster.

And the gun the holster belonged to was pointed firmly in Depth Charge's direction.

He froze, hands in plain sight and launcher at the wrong angle to shoot a grenade even if he'd been inclined to fight. He wasn't. The majority of his mind had scrambled an answer to his abrupt confusion: he'd screwed up. The situation wasn't what he'd assumed it was. He still had no idea what was going on, but apparently he was in the wrong.

A forceful shrill came from the armed alien, and Depth Charge coughed to clear his throat. His voice box sounded rusty, anyway. How long had he been in stasis? "I don't understand." The smaller biped ducked under the weapon and ran across the room toward Rampage, and his optics widened. The instinct to protect temporarily overcame common sense, and he moved, one hand extending. "Get away from him--!"

"Lower your arm!" The command was said in the same squeaky voice but in Standard this time, and Depth Charge's attention shifted back to the weapon trained on him. The raised hand lowered slowly, and he anxiously looked back to Rampage as the other alien reached him.

"Get back!" he urgently ordered in Standard. "He's dangerous!"

"Less than you are," the smaller biped spat back, piercing voice couched in heavily-accented, angry Standard. A sharp squeak was directed at the other alien before switching back to Standard. "Do you function correctly? Do you require aid?" the biped asked the robot shaking on the floor, a fragile, three-digit hands detaching a flat tool to scan him with.

"I must ask that you drop the weapon," the armed alien demanded at the same time, and Depth Charge stared at it in shock. What weapon..? "The box," it said, one hand leaving the gun to point at the spark-box held in the Maximal's hand. "You used it for an attack without discernable cause, and I must ask that you disarm and surrender."

"You don't understand," he protested. "I--"

"Disarm at once or I will be forced to shoot you!" the alien shrilled. "You are under arrest until it is determined that you are not a threat. Cooperate, and you will not be harmed!"

He was being ARRESTED! But the robot they had to fear was Rampage! The crab lifted his head, and Depth Charge's optics lit in fear for the biped attempting to help the psychotic murderer. One monstrous hand lifted toward it, and the Maximal shouted a wordless warning, already despairing for one more life lost to Protoform X--

"Drop the weapon!"

"No," Rampage rumbled to the alien in broken Standard, "but…gratitude. Pain…ends."

The Maximal's mind stuttered to a stunned halt. He distantly heard a strident, "Drop it!"

"No thanks are necessary." It caught Rampage's hand and helped him to his feet, preposterously frail next to his massive form. One flex of metal joints could crush its delicate body, yet the red-purple 'bot merely accepted the help. "You are safe. Your energy flux is passing."

"NOW!" The gun popped, shooting a dark ball of power.

Emerald optics full of fury, pain, and ironic laughter met the Maximal's eyes, and the spark-box dropped from numb fingers as Depth Charge lost consciousness.

* * *

"You have NO idea how much I'm enjoying this," Rampage said, and behind glowing bars, the prisoner glared at him. Restraints immobilized the silver-blue robot, covering his chest-launcher and keeping him from his other weapons. "For once in my life, someone's recognized that I'M the victim of the person holding power over me. And, thanks to these charming fleshlings' sense of justice, the tables have been turned. Now that I have this…" He tossed his spark-box casually, caught it, and studied the sparkling core of his very being. "Well, who knows what a poor, victimized 'bot like me could do." 

"They'll release me once I've explained the circumstances," Depth Charge snarled back, but underneath the Maximal's anger roiled terror he couldn't hide from his enemy.

Not fear for himself, Rampage judged. Restrained and helpless, The raybot still worried for those he couldn't protect. The Maximal had been offline through the flurry of activity that had put him behind bars, leaving him ignorant of what exactly had occurred. He'd only been online for a few minutes before his yelling had brought a stone-faced alien into the room, evidently there to escort the crab. The guard had left and closed the door, leaving one 'bot on each side of the cell bars. Unfortunately for Depth Charge, he was on the wrong side of said bars.

"Ah, but will they release you in time?" Rampage taunted, his inflection on the last two words leaving them open to visions of what the raybot might be too late for. Depth Charge stiffened, the fear leaping higher. "This is a nice little planet. The spaceport is a bit more defensive, from what I understand, but I could take out most of the major cities without meeting much resistance."

The raybot strained against the bonds wrapped around him. "Don't you slagging DARE," he snarled. "Don't even THINK about it, or I'll--"

"Or you'll what?" Rampage asked mildly. "Hunt me down? Kill me? Those threats have gotten old, Fish Face. I've lived through the worst anyone could do to me." He shook his head and turned on his heel to stride toward the exit.

"Where are you going?" Fear laced the hunter's voice, and the crab paused to savor it. It would be so incredibly easy to meet the Maximal's expectations and create his worst nightmare all over again on this planet. The vast whirlpool of anger and fear threatened to pull him down, however, and he couldn't allow that yet. He had to calm the raybot, then.

He made his voice as bored as if they were discussing wiring. "To get you released. They think you're a criminal and I your jailor at the moment, but I imagine that I've picked up enough of the trade language to convince them to let you out. Try not to contradict what I tell them, hmm?" He leveled a serious look over his shoulder at the befuddled raybot. "I've haven't been talking much yet, but I'll spin enough of a tale that you can get the fleshbags' to help us. It's probably not wise to tell them what really happened. I know it probably goes against your blasted Maximal morals, but even you have to see the sense in not revealing our identities."

The question burst from him, low but intense with shocked suspicion: "Why!" Was the Predacon toying with him in his helpless state? He had his spark back, so why would he do anything but go on a murder spree? Depth Charge shook his head as if trying to shake some sense into the bizarre situation he'd been dumped into. "Why are you…I…" He fell silent, unaware that his optics brightened with a frustrated plea for enlightenment from the universe. It all felt like some strange role-reversal dream, and he couldn't wake up.

Rampage shrugged. "It's a nice planet, but it's not Rarmet. We'll need transportation, then, or at least repairs on the _Cutting Edge_. Unless," one brow ridge went up in sardonic inquiry, "you want to remain here?" The Maximal mutely shook his head. The anger and fear he felt from the raybot had flatlined into sheer confusion, and while it wasn't soothing to either of them, Rampage found it less troublesome to deal with. He felt as calmly smug as he sounded when he turned to leave, saying, "I didn't think so."

Depth Charge slumped in his bonds and watched him go, wondering when the rest of the universe had gone crazy.

Hours later, looking up at a green night sky, he wondered about his own sanity.

Sighing, the silver-blue 'bot leaned down to rest his elbows on the balcony railing as he looked out over what he now knew was the capital city of the planet Clieforma. Clie was a sprawling metropolis that had expanded out instead of up as the population grew. It provided an interesting carpet of multicolored lights when looked down at from above, and since Depth Charge's guest quarters were located in Clie Central, the government operations tower, he had such a vantage point. He absently admired the patterns created by the native tendency toward orange and green light colors, but the view couldn't distract him from his roiling thoughts. The day had started out odd and gotten stranger from there. He still couldn't decide if that been a bad thing.

After a tense waiting period where his internal radar had tracked the two pieces of the Protoform X out of range, the aliens had indeed released him from the cell and brought him to an official. The biped spoke understandable Standard and introduced himself as Leigetuant Rew, which was a military title indicating that he had sworn fealty or some such religious rite involving a planetary god. The Maximal had listened to politely to the history of the title and promptly discarded the parts he didn't think were significant. That he was speaking to someone in the armed forces was enough for him. When he'd asked about his imprisonment, the Leigetuant had apologized for any offense given and told him that they had had no prior knowledge about the wild reactions of Cybertronians taken out of stasis. His companion had explained that the raybot hadn't been in control of his own actions at the time but indicated that it was safe to free him. Depth Charge had uneasily agreed with the lie Rampage had fed the officer and assured him that he was fully aware now.

"Excellent!" the blocky biped had squeaked in Standard. "Then I hope we can learn from this as a racial misunderstanding and put it behind us." An expression that was his species' version of courteous questioning settled on his face. "Your companion has requested help, but we have had difficulty communicating with him. Would you care to elucidate?"

How much of that 'difficulty communicating' had been made by Rampage? The crab learned at a frightening rate, and it could be that he hadn't wanted to deal with the aliens and left it to Depth Charge. More important than the depth of Rampage's knowledge was the fact that Depth Charge's internal radar couldn't find the Predacon's spark. "Where is, ah, my companion?" There was sense in not revealing their identities. If the Maximal High Council had labeled them both criminals…but that meant that it was likely Rampage had picked names for them. He just didn't know what they were.

The Leigetuant check a flat screen suspended before him. "Finn is currently at the spaceport, in your ship. We felt that he was being made too uncomfortable by his limited ability to understand us, and he indicated desire to return to the ship." A diagram of the _Cutting Edge_ appeared on the screen and rotated, the damage clearly visible and vital parts highlighted. "Your repairs have astounded the engineers. Except for a need for energy, your starship still functions. A repair crew has volunteered their time if you wish our assistance."

The name Rampage had picked baffled him, but he didn't have time to ponder it. "I would--WE would," he corrected himself, "be extremely grateful for that assistance. We have to reach Rarmet. You see, our ship was damaged in escaping a science facility under the control of a despotic doctor…"

The story he told sickened him in how few half-truths he had to tell in order to cast them in the role of two victims of a joint takeover by a ship commander and the lead doctor of the facility. He relived the horror of watching fellow Maximals and prisoners die alike, and cringed inside that he had lived when they had not. It didn't seem real that a place like the Center could exist, much less the people who'd staffed it. The Leigetuant listened gravely and asked relevant questions, but the Maximal's anger and need for justice were almost tangibly felt. Counterfeiting that would take more talent that the raybot had. Except for implying that the corruption of the facility ended on the moon and went no further, the only outright lie Depth Charge told was to say that Rampage was a fellow guard.

He panicked even as he said it. Actually, he'd been panicking all along that the Predacon was loose, but his fear spiked when he condoned it. The lie marked something he had trouble comprehending, and it made him edgy despite his respectful outward appearance.

Rampage was loose, Primus help them all, and he didn't dare warn anyone.

He HAD to get the help of these aliens because reaching Rarmet and exposing the Maximal High Council's crimes had become an obsession. A justified one, yes, but an obsession he had to fulfill. He couldn't let his friends--and perhaps Rattrap most of all--die in vain. It had been a desperate gamble to flee the A.L.H. Research, a gamble that had cost Rattrap his life, and now Depth Charge risked playing the game against even higher stakes. If he lost this gamble, the planet would lose lives.

It all hinged on half-understood ideas and something cautious that was mostly hope but partially trust; Rampage had kept him alive. Learning how exactly he'd been kept alive long enough to be rescued had turned everything he thought was concrete fact into a jumbled mess of transparent assumptions without proof to back them up. The Leigetuant's version of events was spotty with Rampage's lack of linguistic capabilities, but what the aliens did know was that the crab had freed himself before the rescue and used his energy to keep the manta ray alive long enough to BE rescued. Hazy with exhaustion, the Predacons had collapsed on board the rescue ship. Energy infusions had put him online again, and he'd been fully functional for close to 4 planetary days before Depth Charge had been revived.

At no point had Rampage turned violent.

Now the crab had his spark back, and Depth Charge had no way of controlling or stopping him. Rampage was free…but he had only retreated to the _Cutting Edge_. The raybot had no way of knowing why the mass murderer would suddenly restrain himself, no way of seeing the thoughts, so the only thing he could do was look at the Predacon's actions. Those actions were, as far as he could tell, dedicated to reaching Rarmet.

He didn't trust it. But what choice did he have? Reveal themselves as who they were and possibly be imprisoned as fugitives? Even if he could recapture the spark-box, the fight to get it likely inspire the aliens' government to keep Rampage, at the very least, safely locked up, and other than another break-out, there was no quick way to get through a bureaucracy. They were both intelligent Cybertronians; if Depth Charge had reasoned that out, then in all likelihood, so had Rampage.

He'd clung to that throughout the day when his internal radar couldn't pick up traces of the crab on-planet. Somehow, it was even worse when he COULD sense where the crab was. His radar had pinpointed the Protoform X spark when the Leigetuant had escorted him to the spaceport. While he didn't show it while personally meeting and thanking the crew of the _Garbage Gamine_ and the volunteer repair crew, he was a nervous wreck. Concealing his jittery behavior under a façade of polite gratitude had been hard. He'd gone through all the motions of a rescue victim, expressing gratitude over and over again to the Clieformans who had given their time and effort into helping two strangers, but his mind stayed fixed on the distant spark. The tour of repairs on the _Cutting Edge _had been an exercise of will as the crab constantly moved to keep the bulk of the ship between them. Returning to Clie had been a relief, even though not knowing Rampage's whereabouts strained him.

Leaning on the balcony railing, he wondered if he'd reached his breaking point. His internal computer tracked as it was supposed to, but he just couldn't seem to rouse himself for…well, he didn't know for what. He'd tracked this particular signal as soon as it came in range, but neither explosions nor screams had preceded it. The world had turned topsy-turvy, and he wasn't sure he was right-side up anymore.

Now it waited at his back, and he couldn't even turn to face it. "Doors have admittance chimes for a reason," he said, just for something to do.

He didn't have to see the careless shrug to know it happened. "It seemed kind of pointless," the deep voice rasped as Rampage came into the corner of his vision at the far edge of the balcony and put a hand on the railing. "You already knew I was there, after all. Would you have answered if I'd waited at the door?"

The Maximal looked out over Clie's lights and frowned. "Probably not."

"And if I'd walked past?" Emerald optics turned from their study of the city to study his enemy-ally instead.

Magenta met green, and Depth Charge didn't look away. "I'd have pursued."

Rampage nodded as if he'd expected that answer, and he probably had. The crab's thoughts were his own, however, as he moved his optics back to staring at the alien city, and the raybot couldn't read them. That worried him. He'd relied on his knowledge of the killer only to discover that his knowledge was unreliable at best. He didn't UNDERSTAND. He didn't even know how to approach the issue. If his confusion could be condensed into a single problem it would be easier to understand, but he had to get a grasp on the question before he could start on the answer. And he was almost superstitiously afraid that if he asked, the spell would be broken to release the psychopath once more.

Why hadn't he killed anyone? Why hadn't he killed HIM? Why hadn't he run? Why, why, why?

Depth Charge blinked, picking a mostly harmless question from the whirlwind in his mind. It was one he was almost certain he knew the answer to, and he turned to look at the crab when he asked it. "Did you cause the ship's energy drain?"

From the slightly puzzled expression on his face, that was the last question Rampage had expected him to ask. "No…the cold woke me after we'd been drifting for a while." He cocked his head. "Why do you ask?" The question was almost, but not quite, teasing. He could feel the confusion in the other 'bot.

The Maximal refused to rise to the bait. "The computer showed when you'd reactivated it, but I didn't know when you'd freed yourself." The question was implied, although he didn't say it aloud.

He chose to answer it. The little issues were things that the raybot could figure out given some time; it was the larger things he covered with a smirk. "I picked the locks, Fish Face." Adding a bit of gloating to let the raybot think he'd given away an advantage, "Next time, use better handcuffs." He laughed, ignoring the question burning between them, silent behind magenta optics:

Why was he still alive?

The raybot wouldn't dare ask it.

Still, it'd be best to find another subject. "The fleshbags are going to help us?" He'd spent the day dodging repair crews and Depth Charge's presence onboard the _Cutting Edge_, unwilling to test his control any longer. The rage and hatred were only subdued, not gone, and the raybot's emotions pulled on his. Until he was more adjusted, he'd decided to find what solitude he could. The time alone had given him time to advance his own plans, but it had left him ignorant of what the raybot had done. Slag, he'd half expected a convoy of guards headed by his old friend to come after him, but evidently the Maximal had chosen to…trust…him.

Maybe trust wasn't the right word, but he couldn't think of a better one to use. It was a start, though.

Depth Charge eyed him warily. "Yeah. Apparently there's a native religion that the planetary government is based on, and it really pushes seeking justice." He wasn't one for mystical rites or deities, but this Wyr was one god he could approve of, especially since it helped him. "They don't have transport for us, but Leigetuant Rew has promised a new astronomy section and some engine work for the _Cutting Edge_. It's not a new ship, but it's the best we can do." He hadn't wanted to abandon the _Cutting Edge_, anyway. It belonged to Captain Venara, even if she was dead, and there was a grim kind of satisfaction in finishing the journey in her ship.

Thinking of the starship reminded him of something that had nagged him all day. It was another small problem that he could safely address. "You couldn't have picked another name for me?" he demanded somewhat sourly.

Rampage snorted. "I had to give you a rank, and I knew you'd answer to it. Besides, nobody here knows what a minnow IS." Red hands opened upward on the balcony railing in a shrug. "It was funny at the time."

All day, he'd endured bittersweet memories as the Leigetuant introduced him to people, and he'd reluctantly decided to be amused by it as well. It was just that…Rattrap's corpse still lay in the room he'd locked it in, and he'd had to persuade the Leigetuant that now wasn't the proper time for a funeral. That would have to wait until Rarmet, where he had every intention of using his friend's martyrdom as one more nail in the High Council's coffin. That didn't stop him from grieving today, however.

He shook it off. The fake name had been a surprise, but it WAS kind of funny. "Why 'Finn'?" The emerald gaze evaded him, and Depth Charge watched with interest as Rampage tried to pull off a casual shrug and failed. To his vague surprise, the raybot found himself capable of taunting the crab about it. "Finn. As in…Huckleberry?" Mass murderers did NOT get flustered. Yeah, right. Tell that to someone who wasn't watching Rampage at the moment. "You wouldn't slagging shut up about how stupid that book was, and then you name yourself after the main character. There's something wrong with that. What's next, changing your beast mode to a human?"

"Shut up!" Rampage finally grumbled, giving in when the Maximal wouldn't drop it. "It was the only thing I could think of, alright?" He was intelligent, yes, but not even the most brilliant mind in the universe could be expected to be quick-witted when starving. The blasted bipeds had revived him on the rescue ship and asked him a bewildering series of questions in a language he only understood a couple words of. When they'd switched to pantomime and asked his name, he'd blurted out the first one that came to mind. Using his real name had been a bad idea even then. That didn't mean the slagging raybot had to laugh at him for it.

The raybot smothered his chuckles under a searing glare of wounded pride. It felt good to laugh, but he didn't want to provoke a fight. "Ah. Well, I thought it had been something like that. No worse than what you gave me, I suppose."

He looked out over the city again, pretending that he wasn't sharing a balcony with Protoform X, free of all control. His earlier confused compliance had slipped away, and while his arms still rested on the railing, his hands were fisted. The tension was there, just beneath the surface conversation like a weapon in its holster. It didn't matter what they said to each other; read in the battle-ready line of the Maximal's body was a statement of grim determination. His goal was to reach Rarmet and pass on the information that would bring the High Council down. That didn't mean that he'd lost sight of his other goals. If the crab hadn't returned to the Clie Central tower tonight, Depth Charge would have gone to him, and he doubted that their meeting would have been as cordial.

"I won't let you go free," the hunter said quietly, no mirth left.

"I know," Rampage said just as quietly, and his jailor couldn't read anything from his expression, "but you're a fool to continue to believe that I wish to." He turned from the view, face bland, and Depth Charge gaped at what he'd left on the railing as he walked away. "Goodnight, old friend."

He'd already opened the door to leave when the raybot found his voice again. "Wait! I…" The Predacon's head didn't move, but he paused in the doorway to listen. Unsettled, Depth Charge stared down at the spark-box in his hand, then looked up at the wide spread of metallic crab legs that he couldn't see without thinking of the pain they could inflict and wondered when he'd gone mad. "I apologize for attacking you earlier today," he said stiffly, formally. "It was unprovoked."

"Maximal sentiment," the Predacon muttered just loud enough to be heard, and the door slid shut behind him.

* * *

. 

_Author's Whining: _

_LD: I should mention that there's a typo somewhere in the last couple of chapters--it's not Astrology, it's AstroNOMY. If Rampage was meddling with the Astrology section, well…I think somebody named Thrust has that covered. _

_RAMPAGE: (pompous ) The stars say that we need to do some engine work before we try a Trans-Warp jump. _

_DC: (to LD ) You made me a criminal! _

_LD: Hey, you randomly assaulted a peaceful person. You're obviously deranged. _

_RAMPAGE: (laughs hysterically) _

_DC: Hey! I don't have to slagging take this, you-- _

_LD: You're lucky I didn't turn this into a romance. You know how easy it would have been? _

_DC:…I'll behave. _


	11. Part 9

* * *

**Part Nine**

* * *

_The starship _Eternal Hope _reeled like a punch-drunk brawler on her last legs, desperate to escape the fight. Only the lack of atmosphere prevented space from thundering with the lightening-flash of lasers and miniature nova missile explosions marching up her sides as the shoals of tiny attackers swept along her flanks. Each separate hostile seemed ridiculously small next to the massive ship, but her solid mass counted against her now. Unlike her attackers, she was never meant to be in a fight, and their individual nimbleness allowed them to dodge her pathetic return-fire while she wallowed in clumsy flight. _

_Inside her, the entire open bridge shrieked with battle chatter and damage alarms, sparks flying from busted circuitry and crew alike. Her captain flinched in shared agony as energy discharge shuddered through his chair's shockframe, but he rode that command chair like a handbasket surfing through Hell. "Pull us over, 27 degrees to port," he barked with a voice of steel even as his spark wailed for his beloved ship. Accept the damage to the ship; ships could always be rebuilt--but dear Primus above--"Get the pod bay hatches away from them, slag you!" _

_His navigator's face was fear-locked in a rictus grin, red optics narrow and strain-bright as she fought the ship's mass for fine control. "Damage on starboard thrusters, sir!" she called back hoarsely. "I'm losing her!"_

"_Then get her back!" The captain's fist slammed down on his armrest, his wrist download jack dropping him into the communication net. A hundred panicked voices blurted forth from crewmembers trapped in a hundred different compartmentalized pockets of the Pit he inhabited, pained confusion roiling through the starship even as the tiny darting figures on the radar screen turned for another run. He flinched, dreading the new wave of destruction rolling down his _Eternal Hope_, and his link flicked through the com channels to the one he needed._ _"Palebreak! I need power to the starboard thrusters!"_

"_Palebreak's dead," a flat voice replied immediately, and the captain grimaced. "This is Getaway. We've lost most of the work crews on the starboard side, sir, but I'll send who I spare." Getaway paused, and the suppressed fear felt by the replacement head of Engineering could be heard in his silence. "Sir, Damage Control reports a loss of 94 of the crew on the front weapons' mounts, and Emergency's overflowing with casualties. I can repair controls, but I can't replace personnel."_

_The captain closed his optics for a fraction of a second. He didn't need an engineer to tell him what would happen if they couldn't fight back or run. One direct hit to the Transwarp drive would do more than stop them from warping…"Understood, Getaway. Do your best." He cut the link and switched to Damage Control's line, listening to the grim flow of reports while his crippled ship writhed in the midst of the firestorm burning her through.  
_

"_Who the fraggin' Pit ARE these people!" the assistant astronomer howled, hands flashing over his controls. The dripping remains of his superior slumped in the seat beside him, head crushed where the shockframe had failed and slammed him into the primary Astronomy console. Since the only course plotting they needed in this situation was simply 'away from here,' Skewstraight had slaved the starship's poor excuse for weaponry over to his console. The lasers mounted on the bow and aft of the ship were meant for nothing heavier than clearing a path through minor asteroid fields, but he'd managed to take out two and damage a few more of the attackers before they wised up and approached at angles the lasers couldn't reach._

_Now his captain shot him a furious look clearly meant for the malicious flock arrowing in for another attack run. "Pirates of some kind, but better armed than I've ever seen or heard of." Although a dark suspicion had formed at the beginning of the firefight, and he glanced over at Communications' station before yanking his attention back to the sensor readouts. The vicious little hostiles spat missiles as they came, and his death's-head grin manifested the aura of hatred flooding the bridge. "Brakes, bring her 90 degrees across their line of attack--stand her up on her tail! All weapons: aim for their formation leaders!"_

_The navigator's acknowledgement came out in a fear-maddened snarl that sounded like _Eternal Hope_'s own voice; the cumbersome starship reared, bucking against the push of sputtering thrusters. Her frenzied crew clung to walls and seats while down in Engineering, Getaway held the ship's power system intact with a welded prayer, and Emergency personnel hunched over surgery patients dying under their hands. The captain's blue optics blazed brighter than even the main viewscreen, and his grin turned hungry as six of the biggest blips on the screen were speared by lasers that reduced them to disintegrating flotsam. _

_The screech of _Eternal _Hope's abused metal echoed Skewstraight's howl of victory. "YEEEESS!" The oncoming fleet clawed away from the starship's flanks while the remaining crew on the weapon mounts continued to target the dying attack leaders. _

"_Point us away from them and give her full power!" the captain snapped to Brakes, and then nodded to Skewstraight. "Good job. That bought us a few minutes, but they'll regroup and come after us. They got cocky, but it's not going to be that easy from here on out, now that they know you can burn them."_

"_They won't fall for that again," the assistant astronomer agreed, elation falling away into practicality. "Right. I'll find us another trick, sir."_

"_We'll need it," he predicted bitterly and dropped his hand down to link into the communication network. "Bridge to Engineering."_

"_Getaway here."_

"_How soon can we try for a Transwarp jump? We've broken away, but it's only a temporary escape. There's too many to--"_

"_They're organized again," Roadslip reported from the Communications' section, never lifting her gaze from the sensor readouts. "See if you can get a clearer reading on that distortion beyond them. It may be their main vessel," she said quietly to her assistant. _

_The captain nodded to show he'd heard her. "Correction, they're back in pursuit. Getaway?"_

"_Sir, we can't do it," the de facto head of Engineering said bluntly. "There are cracks the size of my head running down the fuel rods already from running the thrusters under so much damage, and if one--just ONE--of them breaks, we're all dead down here." The sound of a hard swallow came through the link, and the captain frowned. "I know what's on the line, sir. The cracks won't take the stress of a full jump, but the backwash from the reactive mix won't eat through the Transwarp cells until at least after the initial gravitics kick in. That'll take out everything but maneuvering thrusters, but it will give you one huge, short-term boost outta here. We might be able to outrun the slaggers."_

_Perhaps, although the captain doubted so. It was more likely that the pirates would pursue, and it would only stretch the attack out an agonizingly long time further. And at what price? "That would also kill everyone in Engineering," he said quietly. _

_Getaway's voice stayed flat, but the same bare honesty that characterized his reports did nothing to hide his fear…or determination. "Sir, I've evacuated everyone I could spare already, and we've sealed the area as best we could." With a kind of gallow's humor, he added, "Between those cracks and running the thrusters hot, we might not live much longer, anyway."_

_The captain hesitated. "…No. I'll hold that option only in reserve. Most pirates take survivors prisoner for ransom or slavery, and unless I know for certain that they intend to slaughter us, I'll keep surrender as a better option." A cruel, humiliating option, but one that could save his crew and their precious cargo; as such, it was his duty to remember it. "In the meantime, keep working on the cracks. By some miracle, we may yet give you time for repairs." He cut the link before the engineer could reply and turned to his communication's officer. "Talk to me, Roadslip."_

"_I'm still not getting any response to our hailing," she said promptly, "but if they're changing formations like that, there's obviously an open radio link between the fighters and their main ship. They're ignoring us. Redline?"_

_Her assistant shook his head. "I'm working on it. The best I can say is that it's similar to our designs."_

_She sighed and finally lifted her optics from her display to meet her captain's steady blue gaze. "That rules out the Sitian Confederacy, then," she said, and a nonsound of relief swept across the bridge as she named one of the more ruthless piracy rings. The Sitians had a reputation for no mercy, and their technology was so complexly alien that Cybertronian tech wouldn't mesh at all with it; surrender, suicidal as it would be to Sitian pirates, just wasn't possible when no one could communicate it._

_He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "Peritors?"_

"_This is way out of their territory," Roadslip replied after a moment, looking back at her console. "They COULD be from the Barrar Kal's operation in the Ice Storm asteroid belt, but it doesn't make sense. There's no REASON for a pirate ship to be out this far, sir. We're not anywhere near the major trade routes, and the reason we're out here in the first place is because this sector is barely explored; except for us, there's nothing out here to raid--not even an outpost."_

_Blue optics sharpened with interest. "You think they're here for us?" A trap? That had been his first gut instinct when the extent of the oppositions' weaponry had slammed into his ship. True, independent pirates had managed to set up worse before, but not many pirates would be gutsy--or stupid--enough to dare snatching up a ship belonging to the Cybertronian Alliance. They HAD to know what lengths Cybertron and its allies would go to catch them. No spaceport, no matter how disreputable, would open itself to the political and military backlash of harboring such criminals._

_Redline leaned closer to his superior. "The sensors have cleared enough that I think I can try hailing the main vessel directly. Shall I?"_

_She took in his sensor array with a critical look and nodded shortly. "Try it. I doubt they'll reply, but attach our identification number under Cybertron's heading. I don't think it'll warn them off, but it's worth a try." She paused and added more slowly, "See if you can catch an echo bounce off their receivers. It could tell us if these are total unknowns."_

"_We are on the edge of explored territory," the captain said, catching the end of her instructions. "It'd be a monumental coincidence, but it's just barely possible that we're invading someone's home territory." He brought one hand up automatically to check his shockframe's locks while he thought it over. "That would explain why they're so heavily armed." But at the same time, the weapons were familiar. It could be a fluke of fate, but…_

_Around him, the rest of the bridge crew updated their intercept plots as the pirates gained. Skewstraight uploaded firing plans to the weapon mounts for their crews, averting his face with a soft sound of grief when two 'bots from Damage Control arrived to cut the corpse from the main Astronomy console beside him and carry it away. Roadslip and Redline bent over the Communications section intently, conferring over the noisy sparks spitting from the damaged Weaponry console. Emergency's personnel had already rushed its operator away. The navigator quietly discussed thruster capacity with someone down in Engineering, the lines of her face angular and gaunt with panic at the answers she was getting. The captain was silently proud that she could keep her head under such frightening circumstances. None of the people on his ship had signed up for anything like this, and their inexperience showed. That they were holding up so well made his spark ache with pride and sorrow. _

"_Anything?" he asked, and his communications officer looked up._

"_We know they can hear us," she said, "but no reply. We're broadcasting I.D. and name along with a request for end to the attack, and our beacon is squealing a continuous cry for help, but so far they haven't ordered us to heave to or even shut the beacon up. Either they're not worried about anyone hearing us, or they're jamming our signal." Shifting uneasily, Roadslip brought up something they'd all been thinking: "Do you think they know why we're out here? We haven't taken any damage to the main cargo holds, but no pirate would be aiming for them."_

_No, they wouldn't. But any pirate who knew exactly where to ambush the _Eternal Hope_ had to know why she was all the way out here, and he eyed the approaching swarm of blips on the radar screen apprehensively. "Keep working on a firm identification for the main pirate vessel," he ordered Roadslip's assistant. "If we're lucky, they're one of the merchant predators. We might be able to bargain with the equipment if they're just looking for quick profits." Unspoken was the opposite situation: these were slavers, and they didn't want just equipment. _

_His mouth tightened, acidic guilt smoldering throughout his mind. The two-ship escort his starship was supposed to have had been delayed at port for minor repairs, putting the two fighters at least a week behind them. He'd been assured by the Alliance embassy representative at the spaceport--and convinced, which haunted him bitterly now--that an escort was superfluous because Cybertron's shipping rarely came under attack by even the most foolhardy pirates._

_Or the cleverest?_

"_Here they come," someone murmured needlessly. Brakes coiled into a ball of tension, her fingers poised in talons over Navigations' controls while Roadslip transferred her work to her assistant's console and focused on pinpointing each blip in the oncoming assault. Skewstraight spent the last seconds before the horde closed in plotting an escape route that wouldn't be used; he felt very far away from his job as assistant astronomer._

"_Make it count, people," the captain said, his steely voice pulling them together against the fear tearing them apart._

_The first missiles streaked in, rocking the _Eternal Hope_ right before the first lasers stabbed out to jolt her to down to her mainframe. The massive starship's skeleton weaponry crews fought--manually, where they had to--the laser mounts around to lock on individual attackers, knowing that each blast they managed highlighted them as a target for the rest of the dodging, weaving, hungry throng. Beams of terrible, scorching light blew entire compartments open to space, hurling the occupants on Flying Dutchman trajectories into the airless void without the time to scream. Survivors called for help that wasn't there, clinging to their duty as a bulwark against their terror. _

_Their captain snapped orders on the bridge, face a mask of pained hate. He didn't flinch as a missile explosion punched through to the bridge, the sudden airloss slapping the 'bots inside against their shockframes with enough force to leave them gasping. The navigator shrieked, scrabbling at her console as the suction broke her chair at the base. The shockframe succeeded only in keeping her locked into the chair as it tumbled across the bridge and out of the hole, slicing through Skewstraight's chest at an angle on the way and carrying Brakes wailing to her death. The assistant astronomer convulsed for an agonizing minute, body pouring mechfluid and gurgled shrieks silent in the airless bridge._

_Roadslip eeled out of her shockframe and bounded across the bridge to Navigation the moment the air disappeared completely. "Take the weapons!" the captain bellowed over his personal comlink, already slaving Navigation's controls to his own console. The communications officer flipped in mid-jump, heading for Skewstraight's chair._

_The dying 'bot saw her coming through dimming optics, and his one weakly functioning arm flailed at the shockframe's release. The restraints let go a second before Roadslip reached him, dumping Skewstraight to the floor in two separate pieces that slid apart in their own fluids as the captain barrel-rolled the starship. The head twitched once and was still, optics dark. She leapt over the grisly corpse and strapped herself into the stained shockframe while the download jack at her temple linked into the network. "Two functioning lasers, sir!" she reported in a controlled shout over her own comlink. "Damage Control's secondary station is gone, and primary reports atmosphere loss on levels 3, 5, 6, 8, and 9!"_

_The robot in the command chair swore vibrantly as his ship stuttered and lost most of its thrusters. His wrist linked in. "Getaway, what's happened?" He paused, but only static answered him. "Getaway, report!"_

"_They're coming in again!" Roadslip spat. "I don't have anyone left to man one of the mounts, sir; we're down to one forward laser."_

_He queried Damage Control directly and gritted his teeth at the answer. "There's no one left in Engineering," he ground out, radio static roughening an already harsh voice, and both his surviving bridge officers gaped at him. "The fuel rods must have ruptured." The lost head engineer had sealed the area off just for that condition, but who knew how well? The Transwarp cells wouldn't last under the corrosion from the backwash, and thruster power was still dropping. The engine itself was melting away. And after that? The bridge controls had failed from power loss and damage, and there was no one left alive down there to vent the backwash manually. The corrosive mix would eat through the bulkheads in minutes, seals or no. _

_His options had just disappeared. All he had left was the worst-case scenario no captain ever wanted to play out._

"_Get me what you can for a direct line to the pirate vessel," he forced out, and the assistant communications officer ducked his head in a nod. The captain dropped back into the network and cued a ship-wide transmission. "All hands, prepare to roll pods."_

_Redline looked up. "You're live, sir," he said meekly over his comlink as a green ready-light lit on the captain's dented shockframe. "Audio only."_

_Optics fixed straight ahead at nothing, the captain sat up ramrod straight and dropped into the new link out of the ship's network. "Unknown vessel, this is Captain Sheer of the Cybertronian Alliance. We surrender. I repeat, we surrender. Call your attack off." He didn't look to the viewscreen, didn't look to see if the tiny darting shapes were starting their finishing run. He had more than his crew riding on this, and there was nothing he could do if it didn't work. "This is Captain Sheer of the Cybertronian Alliance. We surrender. I repeat, we surrender--"_

"_They're breaking off, sir," Roadslip said quietly._

_He sagged slightly in his chair. "Unknown vessel, we are critically wounded over here. Our engines--"  
_

"_THAT'S A PREDACON SHIP!" Redline yelled suddenly, briefly giving the two officers dazzle headaches as he maxed out the comlink volume, and the ready-light flashed off as both superior officers whirled toward him. "I got a clear bounce off their receivers, sir, and the mainframe computer KNOWS that ship--that's the _Flamedrop_," he gabbled, halfway incoherent with disbelief at what his console was telling him. "She's supposed to be stationed off of one of the Alliance's orbital stations. According to this…" he faltered. Slowly, incredulous optics raised from the readout. "According to this, she's been temporarily released from station duty in order to engage in 'live-fire engagement training exercises'."_

_Dumbfounded, they stared at him, then at each other. Why would a Predacon--? Live-fire--? How did--?_

_A thousand questions beginning with 'why?' flooded his mind, but the captain couldn't begin to answer them. What he DID know was that the Predacon ship had to know who the _Eternal Hope_ was. If they'd heard his surrender, they had to have heard her identification as well, and being a Cybertronian Alliance ship instead of a Maximal or Predacon ship meant that he had a mixed crew on board. It couldn't be an attack of Predacons on Maximals. This wasn't a spontaneous act of deep-seated anger leftover from the war. This was premeditated. The Predacon ship was on official leave, with an official excuse for the expense of the weaponry used here, and--and--_

_The same tactical instinct that had gotten him a captaincy coiled in his gut, dead certain of the answer to all the questions. A leap of intuition that saw the entire trap in sick perspective. _

_No._

_He simply couldn't wrap his mind around a betrayal of such magnitude._

_No._

_The Maximal High Council wouldn't allow…CYBERTRON wouldn't allow…_

_No._

_No pirate could hope to escape Cybertron's wrath, but if everyone blamed pirates…He sickly wondered how many other 'pirate attacks' hadn't been, and what had happened to the poor victims like him. Worse, what would happen to his cargo?_

"_Bring the line back," he ordered with a defeated voice that seemed to belong to someone else. Redline stared at him a second more before jerking a nod. The green ready-light came on again, and the captain closed his optics and did what he had to, knowing he was doing what the attackers had wanted all along. "_Flamedrop_, this is the colonial starship _Eternal Hope_. We've taken heavy damage to our engines and must flush the stasis pod holds before they become casualties. Please," that foreign voice pleaded, leaden with despair, "these are COLONISTS. Don't fire on them. I repeat: do. Not. Fire." He dropped out of the link and hooked into his dead ship's communications network. "All hands, roll pods. I say again, roll pods."_

_Roadslip looked to the main viewscreen, her red optics pained. Predacon-red, if one stuck strictly to a stereotype with many fallacies but just as many truths. As dozens of little speckles launched out of undamaged pod hatches along the ship, she reported, "Pod launch." She grimaced when the flock of blips on the radar cruised in like sharks closing to feed. "They're picking them up on tractor beams, sir."_

_Just as he'd suspected they would. So. They'd been betrayed for the colonists, not their equipment. Enough equipment to set up a brand new colony, millions of credits worth, and the traitors only wanted the stasis pods. Who had ordered the attack, and what would happen to the colonists? Somehow, he doubted he'd live to find out. An operation like this couldn't afford to leave witnesses, and he felt pity for his crew. _

_He leaned his head back against his chair, abruptly dizzy. He idly checked his internal diagnostics and frowned lightly. He wasn't made for spaceflight like the Predacons out there stealing his cargo, and it was starting to show. Power to the life support systems might not have failed, but the systems couldn't do anything about a compartment open to space. It was a safe bet that if it was happening to him, it was happening all over his ship. Or what was left of her, anyway._

"_All hands, evacuate. Volunteers may stay to aid those trapped without access to lifepods, but the rest of you," he had to stop to clear his intakes, "get out. Offer no resistance if you're picked up." He stopped again, but this time it was emotion, not crystallized fluid, that stopped him. Every crewmember that could hear him heard what he didn't say, and he said more in that silence than he struggled to put into words: "You've…done me proud. You did the best you could, but it's over. All I ask is that you get out alive, now. Primus be with you."_

_The line cut off, and he rattled a gasp that no one could hear in the airless bridge. If Redline hadn't been watching him, it would have gone unnoticed in the quiet resignation of his bearing. "Sir?" he asked, unhooking his shockframe and standing. "Sir, are you alright?" That made Roadslip turn as well, and they both watched in alarm as their captain smiled at them. It was a shockingly peaceful expression. "Sir!"_

"_Wasn't…made for space. Marine ship…," he slurred out. "F'rst planet…I landed. Liked th' ships. Alt' mode's…powered by," he coughed, lips coating with ice chips from his intakes, "hydr'gen dioxide rea…reactions…"_

_Roadslip got it first. "Slaggit, he's FREEZING! Get him to a lifepod!" Thank Primus Cybertronians tended to have sealed systems, or their servofluids would have boiled away during the bridge's decompression. That didn't help when temperature froze them, however._

_Her assistant communications officer sprang across the bridge and pulled at the captain's shockframe, but the bigger robot had stiffened in the frame when his joints froze. "Capt'ns…" he sighed over his comlink, and the crackle of crystallized water could be heard in his voice box, "g…go down wi…with…"_

"_Not you, sir," Redline said staunchly, forcing limbs to bend out of the shockframe. He yanked the bigger robot into a fireman's carry and ran for the bridge door. "You want us to survive, you gotta keep the other side of the bargain and set an example."_

_The captain could barely hear him. _

_He'd failed his cargo and his crew._

_His homeworld had betrayed him._

_Perhaps most personal and painful, Captain Sheer had lost his ship._

_As he faded into stasis lock, he thought that there was no irony in dying with his _Eternal Hope_. It seemed like the right time to do it, actually. He'd always followed his hope, wherever it led him. Why should today be any different?_

* * *

Depth Charge had never been one for waiting. Patience was a virtue, yes, but not one that he enjoyed practicing. He had a goal to reach, and it wore on his nerves that he wasn't actively progressing toward that goal. In fact, each second that ticked by felt like it was administered by some sadistic torturer working him over, slowly and methodically gnawing away at his self-control until a scream bubbled up in his throat. 

Luckily, the long work-day on Clieforma's spaceport had ended hours past, leaving the Maximal alone on the _Cutting Edge_'s bridge. There was no one to look askance at his muffled cry of impatience, or offer assistance when he collapsed into a chair. If someone had made such an offer at this point, he probably would have handed it back with a suggestion of where to stick it. That would have done nothing for his relations with the natives, not to mention he'd feel exceptionally guilty about it later however much he meant it at the moment.

It wasn't that he wasn't grateful for the Clieforman's help; he was, really. And he knew what he owed them for making the battered starship operational again sans payment--how could he not, when every time a new component mysteriously appeared in place of the old broken one, no one would even tell him who to thank for donating it? His cause had apparently turned into a planetwide charity, an entire religion that understood his need for justice. From every possible source came technicians with a few hours or even minutes to spare toward working on the _Cutting Edge_, a social sciences specialist willing to help him plan his presentation to the Rarmet media, and a half dozen reporters who wanted to edit the surveillance videos of the last weeks of disappearances among the _Cutting Edge_'s crew in order to maximize impact on limited time. The planet's leading politicians, military officers, and religious figures interviewed him endlessly about Cybertron and the extent he felt the corruption he'd witnessed had spread through the Alliance.

He could see why Clieforma hadn't had much contact with Cybertron and its allies: the planet was simply too…cultic. Their focus was extensive, yet at the same time very specific. If his search for justice hadn't interested the fervently religious public, it would have continued to ignore the entire sector of space that belonged to the Alliance. Instead, they'd turned against Cybertron on the evidence he held and taken his cause as their own.

And it was driving him CRAZY.

Oh, it was what he'd wanted. By presenting his story and backing evidence to Clieforma and inciting such a response, he had confidence that he'd be a monumental headache for the Maximal High Council once he reached Rarmet and its wide spread of media. Allies and neutrals alike would turn on Cybertron's government, and no political cover-up could blunt the damage the truth would render. So Depth Charge knew what he owed Clieforma, as a controlled test environment and a generous supporter.

It was just…gratitude and impatience were a virulent mix. There was no way he could repay the natives for their help, and the unbalanced gratitude became an oppressive burden that was made even worse because he KNEW he shouldn't resent it. He HAD to reach Rarmet. It was an obsession driving him to exhaustion, and even the freely supplied energon from the Clieformans couldn't keep him on his feet forever. A part of his mind knew that it was unhealthy, just as that logical part of his mind knew that his impatience was feeding off itself. Every hour the technicians put in drew him that much closer to his goal, but it was hard to see progress in tangles of wires and new panels when he stayed trapped in this backwater planet's spaceport.

Yet knowing his current mindset was illogical and petty did nothing for his temper, which is why a beep from his internal computer interrupted the Depth Charge equivalent of a hissy fit in the middle of the empty bridge.

He immediately scrambled for his lost self-control, bringing himself back under the iron discipline created by years on the hunt for justice. An impersonal computer voice reported the closing distance, but the raybot was busy working at a minor task in the mainframe by the time Rampage drew near enough to see through the propped-open doors of the bridge. Lingering resentment made Depth Charge ignore him studiously. Rampage was another rankling thorn in his side.

The irony was that the crab wasn't doing anything wrong; in fact, he'd managed to forge a rather strong impression of shy friendliness with the deluge of Clieforman volunteers--which was why Depth Charge irrationally hated him for it. It seemed completely unfair that the psychopath he watched like a hawk could be such an utterly charming 'bot when around any of the natives. Somehow, the crab's overpowering aura of menace became subdued into a kind of amused interest, a constant watchful benevolence that made the raybot twitch nervously. It was so…WRONG. For once, Rampage was actually acting his age with an air of youthful innocence that had endeared him to the sympathetic natives, and Depth Charge could do nothing to warn them of the crab's deception.

Not a hint of Rampage's true nature could be exposed, or his house of cards would tumble down. He knew the reasoning: if he'd lied about Rampage, how much of the true story was actually false? He'd had no choice but to portray Rampage as another victim of the A.L.H. Research Center. In Rarmet, his testimony as prisoner and victim would strengthen his case even more, but the crab currently played the part of a young Predacon guard horribly betrayed by his own government.

The facade only made Depth Charge want to leave all the sooner. Lacking that, he'd taken the risk of spending as much time as possible away from the other 'bot. It was bad enough to hear about Rampage from the natives he worked with, but being forced to act the part of a 'fellow guard' whenever the crab was around was too much to take. Most of the time he wanted to slam the murderer back into chains. But part of the time…part of the time, he wondered how much of the childlike curiosity was real…

The red-purple Predacon paused at the threshold of the bridge, watching his captor/ally thoughtfully. Depth Charge, who carefully did NOT look at him in return, couldn't see the considering look cross Rampage's face. It disappeared into a theatric mask of woe, and the crab staggered into the room to throw himself wearily into a convenient chair. He leaned haphazardly on his beast mode's claws, head back, legs akimbo, and one hand hanging down to brush the floor.

"I," he said dramatically, pointing at the ceiling with the other hand, "am going to retire." He let his hand fall. It clanged when it hit his chest before slipping off as if he were too tired to keep it in place.

Alright, not even an irrational mood of impotent fury could dismiss THAT statement. "Huh?" Depth Charge looked up and blinked, concentration broken. He took in the crab's odd pose with wide optics and furrowed his brow. "What slag are you talking?" he asked finally, when it sank in that Rampage wasn't going to elaborate on his strange statement.

One optic lit dimly, looking over at and considering his less-than-sympathetic companion. The crab heaved a put-upon sigh and brought his other optic online again. "Retirement. It's a bizarre practice the natives have. Apparently, these fleshies work like maniacs for 40 or so planetary orbits, storing everything they earn to spend in last 20 orbits of their lives. I can't decide if it's intelligent preparation or just plain disgusting," he labored to gesture with his hand before letting it fall limp again. "They make slaves of themselves for two-thirds of their lives so they can relax from then on."

Depth Charge continued to look at him blankly. "It's an organic concept."

He stared back. "No animal on Earth did it."

"You weren't around the proto-humans much."

Rampage's hand twitched dismissal of the ape-like beings. "They stored supplies for immediate survival. That I can understand. This business of constant labor to build up a stockpile of resources for the far future seems backward to me. Why starve yourself of enjoyment in the present in favor of a future that might not come?"

That was edging on philosophy instead of minor confusion over another culture's practice, and Depth Charge decided to dodge the heavier discussion. "Most organic beings die of old age, and they want to supply themselves with comfort for the time when their bodies break down." He started to say something else but stopped and cocked his head in irritated query. "Cybertronians don't tend to retire like they do," he stated, the question in the annoyed undertones.

The crab rolled his head back lazily. "Just planning for the future, Fish Face. My life's been hectic, so far. I think I'm due to retire."

Like a riptide flowing beneath the surface of an ocean wave, deep-seated hatred abruptly overwhelmed illogical anger. "Most of your life was spent in a LAB," the Maximal hissed.

"Like I said: two-thirds slavery," Rampage replied without lifting his head.

His blue-silver body tightened into a rigid statue, only the blazing magenta optics showing life. "You KILLED everyone you met!"

"Work, work, work."

He was despicable. He was a mass murdering, psychopathic, lying, manipulative monster, and every bit of the Maximal's building tension came to a head in the boiling mass of hate he felt right that moment. Depth Charge arched in on himself, preparing to loose a verbal assault that would only be matched by the physical blows he'd launch--

--and he caught himself so suddenly it almost materialized as a full-body jolt.

Because in that timeless second of raw hate, the rest of him echoed hollow. The chaotic badly-woven blanket of feeling over the Clieforman situation folded in on itself and was redirected. Everything he'd been feeling drained into the molten furnace of familiar rage, and for the first time in days, his head was clear. This was a hatred he knew; this was something he knew how to deal with. It wasn't an obligation of gratitude he didn't know how to express, or the slow creep of time. This was Protoform X. This was a monster.

A, as he'd known all along, MANIPULATIVE monster.

"You're trying to make me mad," he said, voice stuck somewhere between marveling and bewildered. The hate he pushed aside in order to turn wondering optics on the one who'd roused it. "You did that on purpose!"

"Did I?" Rampage let his head fall sideways to direct glittering optics toward his Maximal playmate. Those emerald optics, no longer veiled by overly dramatic weariness, scanned over the silver-blue 'bot. "Perhaps." He shrugged neutrally.

Bemusement turned to straightforward annoyance at, once again, being successfully manipulated. "My life," Depth Charge said, "is not a game."

"Oh ho, but it is," the crab said, his playful tone not backed by his narrow-eyed expression. "And when you stop making an amateur's mistakes, I may even stop making your moves for you. Yes," he interrupted the outraged tirade before it could pass the raybot's vocalizer, "I purposefully brought up a topic guaranteed to press your buttons. Get over it. Alienating our hosts because you are frustrated will not advance us to Rarmet; in fact, it would lead to delays and a tangle of morals that would take me days to unravel in you." The words had lost their lighthearted tone and were by now terse, snapped out at the increasingly shocked Maximal. "You're letting your obsession take over. Get this through your slagging head, Fish Face: they. Are. DEAD. All of them. Your Maximal friends, the Predacons, and whoever else Jirex fragged on the orders of Cybertron's leading group of thugs. They're dead!"

No longer pretending to be too tired to move, the red-purple Predacon flung himself out of his chair to pace, radiating exasperation and talking too fast for Depth Charge to interrupt with any sort of protest. "They don't CARE when you get to Rarmet. We're not starving and drifting in space anymore, so get rid of this absurd timetable you've set for us and realize that the dead don't give a slag when you get their vengeance!"

"Justice," the raybot interjected feebly.

The crab turned a hot glare on him and enunciated clearly, mocking, "What. Ever. You won't draw me into a fight over your twisted set of definitions. We'll leave this planet when this hunk of space debris is ready and not before, so get rid of the emotional rollercoaster before I put my fist in your face to derail it next time. And in the meantime, Fish Face," Rampage shook his head sardonically, "learn to say 'thank you' without acting like the fleshies are handing you a timebomb instead of a gift."

The sparkbox slipped into his hand unheeded by reflex at the threat, and Depth Charge leaned forward, ready to start into a counterargument against the slagging crab's uninvited criticism.

The words simply didn't come. He stopped dead, struck by several things at once.

One: the Pit-take-him crab was right, slag him. The only thing he could blame for his rising impatience and inability to take charity was himself. His was not the kind of personality to take waiting calmly, or accept something freely given without looking for the catch.

Two: not only could he not argue with Rampage's points, but he had the insane urge to apologize for making him point out the obvious. It was the same feeling he used to get when the first Security Chief he'd served under on Starbase Rugby had taken time out of his busy days to drag one rookie guard aside and set him straight on incredibly stupid things he'd done. It was enough to make him squirm under the Predacon's piercing green gaze, and the fact that it was Rampage, of all 'bots, bringing back that feeling made him slightly queasy.

Three: he was listening to Rampage. To PROTOFORM X. And, despite realizing this, he couldn't find any reason NOT to. Take the lecture with a healthy dose of caution, yes, but it would be more foolish to ignore him than listen. This was the same 'bot who regularly peeled apart the raybot's mind in the middle of firefights, and as manipulative as the crab was, he'd rarely been wrong about what he exposed in the Maximal.

Four: either he'd lost his insight into the immortal killer completely, or there was more going on with Rampage than exasperation and stifled bloodlust. Oh, yes, Depth Charge had seen the murderer beneath the benign 'guard' working with the natives, and if he took the crab's rant at face-value, he'd say it was only his own behavior that had set it off. But he knew better than to take anything Rampage did at face value. Or dismiss it.

So when he spoke, the words came out slow and holding hard onto calm. "Have I been that bad?"

"Yes." Rampage sat down again, emerald optics meeting magenta. "You were merely grating on me, but I'm the one who has to explain your behavior to the puny fleshbags you scare off. Imagine that, if you will." More disgruntled than exasperated now, the crab folded his arms while Depth Charge suffered a stab of guilt for the native Clieformans he'd unintentionally put at risk by sending them to, er, cry on Rampage's shoulder. "At the risk of you abusing my spark," ah, that reminder caused a bit of a flinch in the raybot, "you're less the old friend who followed me around the galaxy and more comparable to whining baggage." Hot anger rose at that comment, which was quite a relief after the stubborn stagnation he'd been tolerating for the last couple of weeks. "I've thought you equal to Cheetor at his most naive in a pitched battle lately," he added and cocked a browridge sternly.

Depth Charge snarled and subsided, common sense beating anger to his voice box. "What do you mean?" he demanded curtly. He shunted Rampage's sparkbox back into subspace to take it out of temptation's way--out of experience, since he'd never taken the crab's manipulations well--and leaned against the new wall panels.

"You know exactly what I mean!" Rampage retorted unexpectedly, and the raybot jerked back upright in surprise. The Predacon leaned forward in his chair, massive hand a pointed accusation at the Maximal. But instead of a threat, the crab's expression conveyed rage tamped down into irritation. "Am I playing a game with your life, or have you let your life become a game? Must I attack you in order to force you to control your own mind!" Rampage shook his head, seething visibly. "Fish Face, stop making dumb mistakes. I took advantage of your hatred, and Jirex used it to twist you into working for the Center, once. Our enemies already know how to use your hate, and they'll do it again. Do I need to explain that, or will you finally think for yourself?"

The Predacon's tone could have frozen water, and Depth Charge glared under the lash of words. Anger pushed against anger as they locked gazes, magenta and emerald, and the raybot looked away first, casting his optics down. His fins trembled at how rigid he held his body, but trying to hide his weaknesses from this 'bot was less than useless when the act of hiding became a weapon in and of itself. Rampage, unfortunately, was right in forcing those weaknesses out before they became exploited flaws.

As for who would exploit his flaws…well, it told the same old story, with new and more sinister characters. A story of an obsession with justice that clouded his judgment, and a person too stubbornly self-sufficient to accept help. All the elements of the tale were there, down to his impatience causing trouble with people who were only trying to help him. But unlike last time, he couldn't push away from the Maximals to become a loner. This time, he couldn't do it himself, and he desperately needed the help however much he might resent it. And that in itself was circular, because why did he resent the help?

He did indeed know what Rampage meant in comparing him to Cheetor. Obsession had limited his mental processes the same way the Maximal catbot's lack of experience had hobbled him in battle. He should have seen it happening, should have remembered the early days of hunting Protoform X, and he definitely should have remembered Rampage ripping holes in what he'd thought he'd known for certain over the past weeks. Hatred could blind--HAD blinded him.

That didn't mean he could stop easily. Or gracefully, for that matter. Slaggit, the Predacon was right. He'd backslide into living a game instead of taking control of the board, and swallowing that truth took a chunk of his pride with it.

Looking up, a chill ran down his back at the look in Rampage's optics. Had that been what the crab wanted all along: a true 'playmate' instead of a game piece? "I understand," he said quietly, suddenly tired of the whole mess. "I'll…work on it."

"Good," his prisoner/ally/tormentor grunted, sitting back in the chair and folding his arms. His voice reverted to the somewhat playful tone he'd started with. "At least you don't pity yourself," he offered grandly, as if giving a consolation prize. "I'd have done more than baited you, then. I can't slagging stand self-pity."

Depth Charge leaned his fins against the wall and stared at the Predacon for a moment, then looked to the ceiling. "Woe is me. What did I ever do to deserve this?" he asked dryly, and Rampage chuckled.

When the crab didn't say anything more, the raybot eventually returned to the work he'd been pretending to do when the conversation began. Rampage slouched comfortably in the chair and watched his companion while the Maximal worked. He didn't bother to disguise his study. Why should he? Except for a level of constant tension from his presence, most of the raybot's attention was for his own problems. Since that was exactly what he wanted, Rampage shut up and let it happen, dipping into his extra sense to feel how things would level out.

He hadn't lied. Depth Charge's preoccupied slide into irrational behavior actually had pulled on his own spark in disturbing and aggravating ways…but it was in the interest of continued help from the Clieformans that he'd finally intervened. Making sure they'd reach Rarmet fell in the area of self-interest that was slightly more important than his personal experiment in seeing how the Maximal's change in mood and mind would affect him in turn. As in tune as he was with Depth Charge's spark, he'd discovered that focus on that one spark among many lifeforms allowed him to remain in control, but that spark had that much more power over him. There was only one direction to be pulled instead of many different ways.

But oddly enough, knowing Depth Charge--or rather, having practically reconstructed him from the spark out--allowed Rampage some autonomy in emotions. More than before, anyway. He remained a psychopath, but one with at least a mask of control. Just knowing the difference of the feel between his emotions and the raybot's made it easier to keep that control, even during stressful times like this.

This issue should resolve itself, however, and the Maximal would return to his usual level-headed self. Depth Charge was a 'bot of deep passions, both hot and cold--Rampage should know, since it was the extent of those feelings that had held his hand back from the final blow when he'd discovered the survivor pursuing him. One lucky survivor who'd used the vast wells of hate, rage, and determination to hammer a Security Chief into another role, a new shape meant for justice. And from that hardened core, Rampage had taken blazing rage and freezing hate and used it to mold a hunter. He'd pared the Maximal down to basics, a survivor balanced between obsession and realism.

It was a pity that he'd never managed to break Depth Charge of his obstinate Maximal idealism. Tempered it, yes, but for a while he'd thought Optimus Primal's simpering group had messed up his plans.

Fortunately, they'd all died. And that had led to today and its newest confrontation. While he enjoyed the pain and fear his revelations often inspired in his captor/ally, openly urging the Maximal to take control of his mind wasn't as subtle a solution as he normally opted for. He wanted someone to match wits with, but honestly, today he hadn't been in the mood for games. Acting the part of the poor Predacon guard taxed him. It would be so easy to kill, or even just torture a few Clieformans with some unfounded doubt about his true motives; internal turmoil wasn't as good as physical pain, but he liked it as well.

They couldn't, however, afford anyone's ill-will.

Which had left him with the mental equivalent of stopping a sieve from leaking. Every action and word had to be checked before it contradicted the role he supposedly filled. It…tired him. Restraint didn't come naturally to one such as him.

Rampage found he'd resumed his original pose in the chair, arms dangling limp at his sides and head back. It was a surprisingly comfortable position because of how his beast mode sat on his back, and it brought his mind back to the way he'd started the conversation with Depth Charge. Retirement still seemed like a strange concept to him, and yet it appealed to him.

He'd never really given the far future much thought. He'd planned for the immediate future because that's all he'd ever thought to reach. Things changed too rapidly to try and predict, things he couldn't control, and since his escape from Omicron, Depth Charge had been the only constant in his life. Hence, the Maximal had been the basis of his only long-term plan, and now it was finally coming to fruition. Once he reached that goal, then what?

Maybe if he'd never been stopped in his planet-hopping killing sprees, he'd never have had to wonder. Maybe if Megatron hadn't enslaved him and given him a taste of what relatively normal life held. Maybe if the Center hadn't thrown him into a situation where he'd been immersed in learning he'd formerly been deprived of. Maybe if he'd remained a killer on the run with the hunter close behind, he wouldn't have seen possibilities beyond the chase. There were options, now, that he knew how to exploit.

Vengeance on Jirex and Kilju lay in his immediate future. Beyond that, what would he do?

Rampage looked into a future of mass murders and running, and wondered suddenly if he wanted what he saw. Cybertron had caught up with him once, twice. Could he keep running forever?

Uncomfortable with his train of thought, the Predacon rolled his head toward Depth Charge. Resolution had stiffened the silver-blue shoulders. A good sign, that. Another week, at most two, and they would bid Clieforma goodbye. After that would be Rarmet and the Maximal's media blitz against the Maximal High Council and its illegal activity.

Green optics sharpened, troubled by an echo: after that, what would the raybot do?

"Depth Charge," he asked slowly, "what are your plans?"

Depth Charge looked sidelong at the Predacon sprawled in the chair, taken aback by the serious note in the raspy voice. Without its customary mocking overtones, it almost sounded like concern. His first instinct was to evade the obvious question until he had more information on what was actually being asked. "What do you mean?"

One massive hand waved impatient dismissal. "I don't mean going to Rarmet. What are you going to do afterward?" He noticed the raybot's optics narrowing and blocked the next issue. "Assume that I'm dead somehow, Fish Face. What will you do?"

Depth Charge shook his head and started to answer automatically as he turned back to his work, but then he hesitated. His throat was empty of the blithe words he'd assumed were there. His hands, paused in mid-motion when the crab had spoken, remained still long enough that the pause became a full stop. His entire body felt frozen, caught in a moment that he was helpless to end.

What would he do? Before Rampage's first capture, before the slag judgment by the High Council and the crash on Earth, his vague plan had been to return to Cybertron. He'd find closure in Protoform X's punishment, and that justice would let him pick up the pieces of his life. From there, he'd be able to start again, maybe on another colony or in some other job. On Earth, his vague plan had solidified into a return to Cybertron with Primal's crew. They'd been a bunch of loonies, but being dragged out of his obsession and into their fight had practically forced him start living instead of merely hunting. Despite his grumbling, they'd grown on him. If Primal had decided to head out again on another exploration trip, Depth Charge had no doubt that somehow all of them--probably protesting the whole way--would have ended up going along for the ride.

Then the A.L.H. Research Center had blotted that future out. One way or another, he'd never be able to go back to Cybertron. His enemies had too long a reach for that, even if he managed to take down the visible rot in Cybertron's government. If--WHEN--Rampage died, the hunt would be over. What would he do?

He'd pursued Protoform X for so long, he didn't know what would happen when he stopped.

The easy answer was that he didn't have time to worry about that, that he'd deal with it when justice was dealt. He didn't have to answer the crab's question right now. The problem with taking control of his side of the gameboard, however, was that he took responsibility for making the moves. If he didn't want to be manipulated, then he had to play, and if he wanted to survive, then he had to play well. He couldn't take the easy way out.

It wasn't about decisions or planning. At this point, the question wasn't what would he do, but what COULD he do.

He didn't know. And suddenly finding that out scared him more than he cared to admit.

Rampage took in the blank stare and inward-turned expression his question had created, and he winced. He'd hoped, a little stupidly, that Depth Charge had the answers as he had when the manuals hadn't explained things sufficiently. Seeing and feeling the impact of his inquiry, he realized that no matter how closely the previous hunt and their current alliance bound them, they were on their own when it came to the future. Neither of them were prepared for that.

He stood, deliberately quiet, and left the raybot to his silent cloud of apprehension. Whatever reaction or solution would ultimately come of this wouldn't help him, so he'd leave Depth Charge to find it himself. His feet wandered aimlessly, taking him through the ship until he stopped at the door to the recreation room. He rested a hand on the access panel for a second before entering, but the array of viewscreens and monitors he'd torn from all over the ship had been left undisturbed. The pinpricked darkness of space surrounded him as the door slid closed. To one side, the screens faithfully showed the spaceport the _Cutting Edge_ docked at, but Rampage turned to face the stars. They seemed so close and so far away, opposition and goal in one.

"What have they done to us, old friend?" he whispered. From half a ship away, he could feel Depth Charge's confusion and sadness, and his brow furrowed. Maybe he should spend some time thinking of his future as well. He had options to consider, now, along with plans playing out already. He could find something to work on while he did that. The engines had some small repairs he could do, if he remembered correctly.

Already lost in thought, the crab turned toward the door. Behind him trailed a soft wake of notes hummed under his breath, and only the stars heard him.

* * *

_Dr. Kilju surveyed the long rows extending down the secure storage area. Ranks and ranks of dull, glassy surfaces and polished metal met his gaze, rounded edges reflecting the scrolling blue lines of light on each stasis pod's read-out. The dim shapes contained within the pods were motionless, alive but off-line. According to the datapad in the doctor's hand, some of the colonists were dissolved into basic components, waiting to be reshaped to fit their new world's environment, but the rest had retained their specific forms and were merely waiting for arrival to start their duties. _

_Perfect._

"_I'm impressed," Admiral Jirex murmured, hands clasped behind his back as he turned to address the Predacon at his side. "When the Alliance promised more test subjects, I hardly expected…this." One hand freed itself and gestured down the rows of stasis pods. _

_The Predacon, one Captain Sharpfear, inclined his head with respectful pride countered by the hint of a sneer on his face. Since the captain's contempt came naturally against someone with a Maximal insignia, Jirex didn't take it personally. "The Tripedicous Council ordered that the colonists be our primary target. I believe that is what you wished for your tests?"_

_The comment was directed to Dr. Kilju, who had moved down the first row toward a particular stasis pod. He nodded without bothering to turn around. "I had not believed the Alliance capable of disappearing an entire colony ship without causing undue notice to my project, but these are the type of sparks theorized to be the most durable in the experiments." Any other 'bot would have included an expression of gratitude for acquiring such desired objects, but Kilju didn't even consider it. Sharpfear had been under orders. He and his crew were nothing but tools for furthering his research, and one did not thank his tools for fulfilling their function._

_Admiral Jirex understood his long-time comrade's single-minded focus and moved quickly to soothe the Predacon captain before offence could be taken. "Indeed, and I'll make sure to mention your obedience to the Council when I convey our progress to them. The Alliance will take note of your unquestioning service in the future." He smiled thinly when the Sharpfear inclined his head in acknowledgement of the emphasis on 'unquestioning.' The report of the ambush of the _Eternal Hope_ had shown the captain of the _Flamedrop_ to be a more than adequate strategist, but the fact that the Tripedicous Council trusted him with the assignment spoke of his discretion as well. The captain had a grasp of subtly and brute force that would do well in politics instead of on the bridge of a fighter ship, although the danger was no less. _

"_I trust that there will be no investigation into the disappearance of the colonists?" Kilju asked, uninterested in the odd pair's political ambitions. Maximal and Predacon returned their optics to him. "The less attention drawn to the incident, the better." The doctor found the pod he wanted and marked it for disposal on the datapad; from the information he held, the Maximal within would be useless to him. Perhaps one of the other scientists in the Center would have claimed the unused pods for their own needs, but the rejected pods were already destined for another end. _

_Captain Sharpfear drew himself up, defensive pride stiffening his shoulders. While he couldn't say that he respected any scientist as he would a warrior, he'd seen something impassively ruthless looking back at him when they'd first met, and that he could respect. "We picked up any life pods that managed to launch, and our scanners showed that by the time we left the colony ship adrift, whatever survivors remained trapped within it had expired. A team of specialists went in and destroyed the bridge computer to scramble its data. Without its scanner data or bridge recordings, or a witness, the missing stasis pods will lead investigators to blame the attack on slavers. Any hunt will be directed toward the pirate sectors, not here." The captain's angular face split in a wolfish grin. "Don't worry, doctor. We've tied up the loose ends."_

"_Have you." The doctor looked at him, level gaze somehow knowing. It gave Sharpfear the impression that he was a specimen under observation, which disturbed him strangely. For a brief moment, he had the feeling that this scientist, though no warrior, posed a larger threat to him than any battlefield he'd fought on. _

_But the moment passed, and he shrugged it off. The Maximal at his side politely offered him a tour of the A.L.H. Research Center, and he accepted with similar politeness. Underneath the official mannerism, there was real curiosity. He'd never heard anything but vague rumors of this moon until his orders had been delivered, nor had there been a hint of what experiment could call for so many 'volunteer' sparks. That he'd been included in the Tripedicous Council's--the Cybertronian Alliance's!--secret indicated a level of trust he'd hardly dared dream of. _

_Yes, he would like a tour of the Center. Secrets had power, and this place brimmed with it. With any luck, some would spill over onto him._

_Admiral Jirex watched the Predacon captain stride out of the storage area, seeing the controlled eagerness in the aggressive 'bot. An ambitious captain of many talents, as the Tripedicous Council had promised. If not for the Alliance's orders concerning the _Flamedrop_, he'd have requested that the Predacon fighter ship be kept here for the Center's small garrison; however, sometimes an official and very visible leave of absence for 'live-fire engagement training exercises' proved more useful than an unofficial fleet._

_He sighed. It was a pity, though. A waste of potential._

_Shaking his head, Jirex walked down the rows of stasis pods until he caught up with Kilju. The doctor nodded a casual greeting to him, obviously intent on his work. Again, Jirex understood what could have been seen as insubordination, and he only nodded back. He watched his comrade mark pods for disposal and waited, knowing that the doctor understood the difference between just watching him work and waiting to talk. He thought nothing of leaning against one of the pods. To him, the Maximals and Predacons within this room were already dead and therefore beneath notice. _

_Yes, these two understood each other._

"_Where are the remaining crew members?" Kilju asked, continuing to move down the rows. "I assume they are alive?"_

"_As specified in the Tripedicous Council's orders, of course. They're in cells aboard my ship, awaiting their final destination." _

_The doctor glanced at him, frowning lightly. "If possible, I would like the surviving officers. From what I understood, most of them will be unnecessary for the next phase, and their sparks might be strong enough to survive the tests."_

"_Only a few remain, but you're welcome to them." Jirex idly tapped his fingers against the read-out on the pod he leaned on. "I'll have them delivered to you when I return."_

_Now Kilju turned toward him, finally distracted from his work by the conversation. "All of them? Is that wise, Jirex? Even with the Maximal High Council diverting the media, the least hint of foul play will cause scrutiny we cannot afford. I would rather sacrifice a potential test subject than lose the entire project."_

"_Relax, Kilju," the Admiral said, smiling. "The colony ship's captain died during the ambush, but we recovered his body. The officers will be assumed missing in action or after the fact as long as the captain is found. His presence will imply that. Trust me, this would be convincing even if the High Council didn't touch it." _

"_We can't afford an unresolved mystery," Kilju cautioned. "Don't make it convincing--make it CLOSED. No suspicions, no further investigation."_

_His smile widened. "The High Council's already feeding the Alliance the first half of the story, and we'll simply be giving them the ending everyone wants to hear. The public loves a circus, and the bloodier, the better." _

_And what a bloody circus it would be. By now, the _Eternal Hope_'s silence would have been noted back on Cybertron. Nearby stations would be ordered to investigate the colony, and someone would eventually backtrack the ship's route to find the missing colonists. Once the starship's drifting hulk was discovered, the damage, dead crew, and missing stasis pods would tell a tale of battle and slavers. It wouldn't take much but the evidence to prompt Cybertron and its allies into a murderous pirate hunt._

_Before any attention could turn toward deeper investigation, however, the hunt would be called off by the simplest means: killing the guilty 'pirates.'_

_Jirex didn't know what ship and crew had been designated as the guilty party, but it wasn't his job to find criminals. One of the High Council's various allies would deliver a shady captain and crew with an appropriate ship; his job was to frame them. His small fleet would soon leave the moon for a designated sector, where they would destroy the 'slaver pirates' and scatter the wreckage with Kilju's discarded stasis pods and the dead bodies of the _Eternal Hope_'s survivors. The colony ship's captain would be included in those bodies. Since no one else would survive the battle, the captain's dead body would only make it easier to identify the dead 'pirates' as those who had destroyed the _Eternal Hope

_As for the gallant attackers who'd brought justice to the brigands, well, they'd run into them by chance while out on a training run in the sector. The High Council would praise the brave Predacons who'd given their lives to avenge the colonists. A pity that they'd all died, but just because they'd been silenced didn't mean that their actions couldn't speak for them._

"_Don't worry, doctor," Jirex said silkily. "We've tied up the loose ends."_

* * *

.

* * *

**Author's Whining--**

**LD: **_(frowns at battle scene)_ I've read too many Honor Harrington novels for my own good, I think.

**Rampage: **_(vicious grin)_ Hey, Fish Face! Guess what?

**DC:** _(wary)_ What?

**Rampage: **June 6 is National Emo Beatdown Day, and if you're still angsting by then...

**DC: **Get that stick away from me!


End file.
